Legs in a Facist World

The intent of this project is to bring to light the bias that today's society has towards faces in a profile picture.  Even when people chose not to display a picture of themselves, often a drawing of a face or a meme including some kind of face is displayed.  My goal with this project is to make people re-evaluate that kind of thinking.  

The profile picture that I will be displaying, starting tomorrow morning on my Facebook profile, will be a picture of my legs.  People may just assume that my thumbnail selection skills are lacking and click on the picture to see the full thing, only to discover that it really is just a pair of legs.

I hope to make people feel slightly uncomfortable and question why legs might be an appropriate alternative to having a face in a profile picture.

PROCESS

In making this profile picture, I chose to wear a plain pair of leggings and a nice pair of high heels, in a way objectifying the legs.  I also chose to pose in a way that showed off both the front and sides of my legs and shoes, putting a 'modelistic' twist on it.  I wanted to produce an image of myself that seems less than human.

PRODUCT

The image that I used as my facebook profile picture, beginning on Saturday morning, is shown above.  The picture was simply taken with a phone camera, similar to how many other selfies are taken.  I hoped to have an image that, if a viewer could see the full thing, would be a generic image of a person, posing and smiling.

EFFECT

The image of my legs had an interesting effect.  The first, was that compared to my normal profile pictures, the image got significantly less likes, meaning people either overlooked it, or, finding the image uncomfortable, chose to ignore it an move on.  Also, a couple of comments related to the 'attractiveness' of the image, either referring to the shoes or the legs themselves as being visually appealing.  Another comment, was simply 'why'.  These mixed responses were how I imagined the image would be perceived, either as objectifying or as misunderstood.  

REFLECTION

My initial hypothesis that people find body parts, other than a face, to be confusing as a representations of themselves was proven to be correct. If I were to do this project again though, I would chose a different body part, one that is rarely seen as attractive or sexual on woman, possibly an arm.  This would most likely elicit a more confused reaction and a less visual attractive based one.