Sugar Dream

All my life I was told how to be a boy. I was told that I needed to play sports, love women, and put myself first. As I begin to experience things on my own, I begin to realize what true masculinity is. I began to explore the most extreme forms of male identification. I started to look at Drag queens and their influence on masculinity. Drag has always questioned what it means to be a man through the use of performance, makeup, clothing, and set design. Looking at how Drag queens present themselves, I began a series of self-portraits and photographs depicting what masculinity means to me. I began to think about all the ideas that were instilled in me about gender and started to question what they meant. Looking at paintings and the romanticized female nude I explore objectification from the male perspective. Looking at classics works of art I am learning just how involved masculinity is. Looking at the ideas from the mind of painters I really began to understand how men perceive women. We consider art to be a very exclusive club for the high class and the elite; the place where women were first seen nude and put on display. 95% of all the nudes in the MET are female when less than 5% of the artists are female. Through the use of props, set design, and self- portraiture I begin to explore how I interpret masculinity. “Sugar Dream” is an exploration of my masculinity.