Men and their appearance

In society today it not only women who want to change their bodies. Men also feel the pressure to look a certain way. There are various influences from the media of the ideal man and the ideal women however this look seems to be impossible to achieve and as a result puts pressure on young women especially to look like the ideal. I thought it would be interesting to investigate how men aspire to change their bodies as do women and which part of their bodies they might want to change.

I took both shoots in the studio using two lights and I wanted to create a clinical theme in my photographs. I placed my models in front of a white back drop, and tried to control my models clothing by asking them to wear dark plan clothing so that they would stand out in front of the white back drop. For this shoot I would like to achieve the same style shoot as I did for my female shoot but by also exploring men as well I felt this would balance my investigation by looking at both genders.

Model 1
With my first model I began by photographing his face and focusing on various aspect that men aspire to have such beards these are currently in fashion and tend to symbolise masculinity. Men also aspire have broader should also they appear to masculine as well, they tend to go to gym in order to achieve these. What if changing your body was as simple as clicking a button and your perfect body would be posted to you. Mannequins which appear on shop windows are the ‘ideal man’ it is what they are expected to look like or even aspire to look like. I felt it would be powerful to take image of these young made to represent how different the ‘ideal’ was from the real. The average body shape for a man is far from the six packs that are advertised in the media. Postal could play a large part in the future in the way we change and look at ourselves. How far are we willing to go to change our body image? I wanted to explore if people think there is a right or wrong way to look. Is the body we dream of having realist or even possible to achieve

Through conducting my investigation it was clear from both gender that birth marks, stretch marks, where seen to be imperfect and that most of the people that had them wished to change and get rid of them. This could be because it does not fit the perfect look.  

Model 2

Both of my models where different in shapes and so therefore gave an image of two separate young boys. It was interesting to discover that some young boys tend to want to change their bodies in much more artist such as getting piercing and tattoos, for my further development I feel it would ve interesting to document men with tattoos, and understand why they want to change their body in the way rather than replace body parts.