Abstract
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in; font-size: medium; font-family: Calibri, sans-serif; caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Unbound</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> is one of the creative outcomes of a research project that explores the social notions of "woman" and the construct of women's bodies in western civilization throughout history. The project aims to visually represent the concepts, some ambivalent (e.g., life/birth vs. death, salvation vs. damnation, earth vs. sea) and some paradoxical (i.e., a woman is a regenerator but not a creator), that a women’s bodies symbolize. Through the design of <i>Unbound</i>, the designer aimed to represent the ambivalent symbolization of the female body and feminine sexuality. What has been an erotic object of men’s sexual desire and a symbol of physical/psychological entrapment has been reimagined from a woman’s point of view. Made by a woman designer, <i>Unbound</i> is intended to remind women that they have always owned their bodies and sexuality, despite the social norms that have entrapped them within their own bodies. <o:p></o:p></span>
Highlights
At the inception of this creative research project, the designer chose The Second Sex written by Simone de Beauvoir as a source of theoretical and philosophical inspiration
If, according to Beauvoir, “the woman’s body is one of the essential elements of the situation she occupies in this world” (p. 48), the designer believes that the situations that women had to endure are realized through women’s bodies and clothing
It is not surprising that the woman’s body is translated into a variety of metaphors, such as sea, moon, tide, birth/life, Mother Earth, Nature, a fountain of life, fertility, reproduction, death, conduit or vessel, evil, ignorance, darkness, lust, erotic object, physical entrapment and confinement, the sinner, adulteress, and the immaculate, etc. (Beauvoir 2011; Clark 1971; Culianu 1995; Rodrigues 2016). When it comes to feminine sexuality, historically, women suffered from various forms of social control over and negative perceptions of their bodies, after Christianity became a dominant ideology in western civilization
Summary
At the inception of this creative research project, the designer chose The Second Sex written by Simone de Beauvoir as a source of theoretical and philosophical inspiration. 48), the designer believes that the situations that women had to endure (e.g., discrimination, suppression, exclusion, etc.) are realized through women’s bodies and clothing. It is not surprising that the woman’s body is translated into a variety of metaphors, such as sea, moon, tide, birth/life, Mother Earth, Nature, a fountain of life, fertility, reproduction, death, conduit or vessel, evil, ignorance, darkness, lust, erotic object, physical entrapment and confinement, the sinner, adulteress, and the immaculate, etc.
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