Artist Statement

This series started with me going down a rabbit hole of vintage ads from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s and realizing how blunt they actually were. Not even subtle. Just straight-up telling women and girls who they should be and what was wrong with them.

One ad reads, “Look Ma, I’m a sexpot,” sexualizing a young girl to sell lip gloss. Another, for Lucky Strike cigarettes, basically asks, “Is this you five years from now?” and shows a thin woman in a swimsuit next to a heavier version of her, with the suggestion to smoke instead of “over-indulging.” And then there’s one I couldn’t let go of, a woman’s face marked up with X’s over her hair, eyes, and teeth, listing all the things she has going for her, only to follow it with: “But these charms may be wasted if she uses the wrong deodorant.”

That “but” became the anchor for all three of my collages.

For this project, I combined my own photographs of real, everyday moments with fragments of these ads. I wanted to see what would happen if those two worlds existed in the same space. My images are quieter, more honest. They’re about presence, friendship, getting ready, just being. The ads, on the other hand, are loud, prescriptive, and kind of relentless. When they’re layered together, the contrast feels uncomfortable in a way that’s hard to ignore.

That repeated image of the woman with the Xs from the deodorant ad started to feel bigger than just one image. It became a way of thinking about how women are talked to in general. You’re pretty, but. You’re close, but. You’d be better if. There’s always something to fix, something to improve, something to buy.

This work is really about making that pattern visible. Taking these old messages and putting them back into conversation with real people now, and realizing they’re not as outdated as we might want to think.