On the Other Foot

I grew up in a traditional home where my father worked a full time job to support his family, and my mother was a homemaker. As a child, my brother played with action figures, and I played with baby dolls. In the past year, the constructs of masculinity and femininity began to fascinate me, and I started to wonder, “What makes a girl a girl and a boy a boy?” Obviously, there are physical differences, but why should a boy who plays with baby dolls be considered feminine? Why is it that we never see women football players? I find these stereotypes to be unfair, so I wanted to address them in my photographs and show that women and men can acceptably have roles of the opposite gender.

I chose to use shoes as the subject of my photographs because there is typically an obvious difference between men’s and women’s shoes. Shoes themselves are differentiated by gender, so I wanted to make the gender in the picture obvious to the viewer. For example, in my photos women are represented by high heels and men are represented by combat boots and dirty tennis shoes. The shoes are displayed as if a person is actually wearing them, performing an activity opposite of its stereotypical gender role. The absence of people in my photographs represents the viewer’s freedom to place anyone in their shoes, literally.

I hope the viewer will acknowledge my effort to help eliminate the boundaries of gender roles. I also want the viewer to challenge, question, and form their own interpretations of my body of work.