Being in Another Body

Intention:

What makes a profile picture a photographic depiction of you? What aspects of a picture do people look in before hitting the like or comment button. Is it your face, your overall being or the idea that you are the creator behind this content?

In this project, I am going to use a face-in-hole image to see how people react to bad photo-editing skills as well as using an image of another person's body to portray myself. My face-in-hole image will involve a picture of my face edited into an image of another woman's body. Often, when we have a full-figure shot on Facebook, it involves our own body. I want to see how people will react to this very different kind of photo, a photo that would not typically pop up in my timeline.

I anticipate some confusion and comments on my photo, and ultimately, I hope to use that information to explore the role of physical identity through this project.

Process:

This idea was actually inspired by an app I had on my iPod from a few years ago. I was playing around with some face-in-hole effects, and thought they looked very funny. So for my project, I went through and thought about various pictures I could do, but using the Internet.

I seldom post pictures of myself on Facebook. My last one was from 2 summers ago.

I have many profile pictures that don't have me, including promotions for upcoming school events.

Some photos were just out of the question.

I thought about portraying myself as someone who was very masculine and muscular, but then I thought that I didn't really like the idea of having a photo of me in that floating around the Internet.

I thought about becoming a clown, but then I didn't want people to stop taking me seriously.

I finally settled for a photo of Miss World.

So my developed criteria after going through and picking a photo? A picture that is extremely disturbing or weird, with the purpose of encouraging more meaningful responses from my friends. By using a photo of someone of my gender, I can have my audience react to the novelty of the photo more.

Product: Through a website, I inserted a selfie of myself (took too many selfies) looking up, as if I was accepting my crown for winning the title as Miss World. It was very simple to use, as you had options to adjust the rotation and size of your face so that you can make it more realistic. There were also ways to adjust the coloring of the photo, including contrast and saturation. Once I clicked done, I was able to upload the photo onto my computer and ultimately, I was able to post it on Facebook.

And voila ~ here is my final product, after hours of deliberation and editing. 

Effect: As of now, I received 34 likes on my picture and 9 comments, over the course of a few days. Most of the people that responded to my picture were people I've at least talked to in the past. People who made comments were closer friends. In general, people who I was not as close did not respond to my photo. There were, of course, exceptions.

Overall, the level of response was expected. I did anticipate (and pray for) comments, which would substantiate a reaction for this project, but I wasn't expecting for them to be going-with-the-flow. I wasn't really sure how many likes I would get, but final number seemed reasonable to me.

Honestly, reading through the reactions of my friends were probably the best part of the project - they were amusing and encouraging. I couldn't stop laughing every time I saw the second comment of my friend, Alice. It's interesting how the novelty of the photo could spark a moment of horror in my friend.

I later told some of my friends that they were part of a project, and they were intrigued by what I was doing in the class, and gave me more encouraging comments.

Reflection:

Overall, this was an interesting project. While I cringed once my profile picture was updated for this project, so much that I downloaded the Facebook messenger app so I could still read my messages without going on actual Facebook for a while, the overall response I had received made me think that I had done a worthwhile project. Through this project, I truly understood the hidden social conventions within social media, and that breaking them now and then is not necessarily a bad thing. I do not think I would have done anything differently. But I appreciated how this project allowed me to go out of my comfort zone.