Be skinny. Be thin. Be sexy. This has been the message of mass media to multiple generations of girls. Women are pushed to have the physique of the latest Cosmopolitan cover girl. In addition, they’re told what sizes to wear and what diet they should be keeping up with. Maureen Connor’s Thinner Than You brings to light the problems of the pressures women are put under to achieve extreme thinness and become a sexual object. With just the simplest items she exposes how insane cultural and social constructs became in the 1990’s.
Thinner Than You by Maureen Connor is a simplistic piece of work that speaks volumes. The focus is to expose the pressures American women face to achieve extreme thinness and become a sexual object. The piece includes a tightly…show more content… Everybody has been told that. In the 1990’s sex played a socially significant role. Television shows like Baywatch frequently used figures such as Pamela Anderson as sexual objects. Furthermore, the 1990’s marked the beginning of the hyper-sexualized woman in advertising. Sony’s “You Know You Want It” and Wonderbra’s “Hello Boys” campaigns are just two examples. Maureen Connor understood over-sexualizing women was becoming a social construct. As a result she used Thinner Than You as a beacon to make women aware of it. It all begins with choosing cloth as the main component of her piece. Talking about the piece Maureen has said “it is about a woman as depository, as a container. Men ejaculate inside of the women. This is clothing, so it could represent her interior as a pocket.” Moreover, the traditional idea of a body in art is that it represents the home of the soul. The see through attribute of the dress signifies an empty vessel of soul. Connor is attempting to say that sexualizing women takes away their identity. Finally, the base of her piece is meant to represent a testicle. Through all of this Connor is using her piece to grab the attention of women and bring awareness to becoming