Romance Magazine is an 18x24 digital collage!! I made this piece in Photoshop using 15-20 found images. For this project, I wanted to mix vintage pop art with modern-day pop art and turn it into a magazine cover. Besides the fact that I love how this piece turned out, so many little hidden tokens / easter eggs in this piece make me so proud of it! I wanted to pay tribute to what it has meant to be female throughout time by using familiar images or symbols that represent feminist stereotypes from the male perspective.

With everything happening in modern-day news, the question "What is a woman?" has caught my attention. I made a piece visually describing what it is to be a woman from a male perspective. And while brainstorming for this larger-than-life idea, the concept and personification of a "bimbo" and what society has turned it into came to mind. The term "bimbo" is often used as a derogatory slang term to describe a person, typically a woman, who is perceived as attractive but lacking in intelligence or having shallow interests. Things like makeup, fashion, being too talkative, wearing your heart on your sleeve, and prioritizing romance have become this feminine image to society in the past and still hold rank even now with all these comments on what it means to be a girl, what to do, how to act, how to dress to not only be perceived as female but to be considered a female has progressed further than anyone would have imagined and clouded people's judgment. 

This piece has shown me how superficial the debate in question even is. Being a woman is so much more than what you see on the surface. I genuinely enjoyed creating this piece, and I hope you can find its hidden elements and meanings. Because I loved working on this so much, it guided me to think about what it truly means to be a woman. That being said, I will dive further into this topic and bring my thoughts and ideas to light the best way I know how, by making more art.