Meet Ren

After a recent class and committee meeting one weekend, I realized that too many of my images were "domestically gender themed." (I don't know why I put that in quotes seeing as how no one specifically said that, but that is the consensus.) The suggestions about how I could counter this in the photography ranged from dressing up as a man version of Ren to only showing Ren in traditionally male roles. The odd part about each of those suggestions is that I think the gender issue becomes more at issue because it would appear as though I was only concerned with showing inequalities with gender.

Another suggestion though, one that I had been mulling over but wasn't sure of, was to introduce a second character. The reason for this being that he could actually be male and he could drive home that this project is not about women's issues, but American issues. Especially if the two characters suffer from some of the same mallady's, which would be narcissism, vacuousness, disinterest, entitlement, etc. (Basically, the two roles would make the intended sentiments stronger while downplaying the gender issues.)

When I came up with Rin, part of who she was evolved out of my fascination with Japanese culture. This fascination doesn't really come into play in the work itself, only in the original myth of Rin, which at this point has sort of been abandoned. However, I named her Rin because I did a search on the most popular girl names in Japan, and Rin was among them. So, when I created her counterpart, I did the same search for boys. The result was Ren.

Honestly, I think Rin and Ren ultimately says exactly what I want to say with this project. It would be like saying Jack and Jill, but using Rin and Ren makes them want to be something that they aren't even more. These people are not real on any level. The entirity of their existence is in the costume of success and contentment, at any cost. And so, Ren was born.



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