Making your Man
The myth of masculinity is about the expectations and idealism that people have of men. Expectations they measure men up against and then become to some extent disappointed when they don't get what they want as they pursue for the perfect good looking man with a six pack that is also 'manly' and confident and the perfect gentleman.
This collage event is about this, I gave people a description of a word that matches up with a myth and got them to collage a man based on that description. They had to choose from face shapes, eyes, mouths, hairs and bodies as well as the colours blue or pink of those features.
With a lot of the words people were very stereotypical, for example with feminine they would go for the colour pink, longer hair, and a slimmer body. And for tough, the colour blue, an anger feature, facial hair and muscle. One person said "It is bad to judge someone on how tough they are based on their appearance because you can be emotionally tough but not look it" And that is the point, as a society we are very judgy on looks, and these expectations/myths are a built up of that.
With the word 'Perfection' people created the most beautiful guys they could find to them and some even asked "Can you make him come true?" The answer was no, because that perfect men was built of different people's features, he had the eyes of someone that their body was classified as feminine and the body of someone that was classified as tough, he wasn't real.
From this event I hoped I showed people that even though they did have fun building these fantasy men, that men are also more then that and come in different forms and identity, that like women are also expected to meet certain criteria and I think it was quite successful in doing so.
