Grade 12 Visual and Media Arts Theme: Self-Love, Happiness, and Female Identity

In the past few years, I have been drawn to topics like feminism, religion, identity, happiness and self-care, as well as representation in film and media. In order to explore these topics and how they affect me — as someone who was born as and identifies as female — and potentially others, I came up with a single question that encompasses what I want to discuss through my art:

How can one find happiness as a strong woman who is proud of their identity?

In order to answer this question, we have to realize that there are things that may stand in the way of women who are trying to find happiness in their identity, even including other parts of themselves. An example to this could be women who value religion as an important part of their identity. Different religions and the different church communities within those religions all vary in their expectation(s) of what it means to be a genuine or valid woman of faith.

Even simply being a part of society can have a negative impact on women trying to find happiness in their identity. Being constantly bombarded with magazine headlines and movie protagonists telling us how we should or shouldn't act makes a bigger impact than we may realize. Not only that, but women are constantly expected to maintain double standards that are completely impossible to achieve. Be "pure" but be sexually mature, stand up for yourself but don't complain so much, be attractive but don't put so much effort into your appearance, the list goes on.

Another thing women (as well as other genders) may experience is having two or more conflicting identities. An example of this could be how a person identifies in terms of sexuality as well as religion. Both of these identities — specifically the communities of people associated with these identities — are typically known to be against one another, and it can be hard to a person who feels like they belong to both to feel comfortable expressing both sides of themselves without any sort of guilt or feeling like they should pick over the other. I want to look at how this kind of problem can specifically affect women, based on how religion, media, and any other collectives where like-minded people express their opinion, make commentary about how women should act or identify.

The main message I want to get across to women seeing my work is that they can be proud of their identity, whatever it may be. Being proud of your identity means to not only accept it but embrace and celebrate it, even if doing so makes your life more difficult. It means to be completely unafraid of sharing this part of yourself with others because you have nothing to be ashamed of.

To me, the solution is simple. Your identity doesn't belong to anybody but yourself, so stop letting other people decide it for you. Yes, you should be aware of the struggles you may face as a result of rejoicing in your identity and fighting for it, but you need to also know that you can never please everyone. The healthiest thing for you to do is figure out your identity and how to be happy with your identity on your own, without the opinions of the people around you. Do it for yourself.

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