Synthesis Essay On Gender Identity

Self-identification does not have a category, its meant to express feelings and simplify us. Feminist break through in contemporary art has given female artists the chance to redeem power of their bodies with the use of self-portraiture.

Questioning identity: Gender, Class, Ethnicity gives us an understanding as to how gender identity works and the ways in which we are influenced through social conventionalization. Identity gives reason to question yourself, what type of person you are and how you might appear to others. In society we have different groupings based on certain identity traits. These traits are what we identify with when belonging to a group, through choice of some degree, for example we choose what clothes to wear, shaping our identities.

Belonging to a group allows us to know who we are, we are able to identify with what makes us and who we can relate too because we are able to distinguish differences amongst each other. We find comfort in being able to identify common traits with another person.

Society influences stops us from truly expressing oneself. Corrupt identities are produced due to the obsession of stereotyping in our modern life where social media has taken center attention and illustrated stereotypes of groups using unfair representations.

'Identities are not fixed and constant; they change too.' (2002, P9).

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When a female artist presents herself in such a way she is able to regain her power and destroy all disempowerment of the nude female form. The viewed and the viewer has been unsettled as the traditional western ways of painting have been challenged- masculine viewings of the nude can no longer be viewed as conventional stereotypical