Di Liu

From a young age, we're taught that "girls should act like girls." What are girls supposed to be like? "Gentle, virtuous, obedient?" Society, including our families, has labeled us with many things we shouldn't be. The prejudice against women never stops. For example, if a woman is strong about her work, she is called a "strong woman" and has no femininity; if a man is strong, he is called a "bossy president" and has masculinity, as if women should be standardized. We are defined by our gender and bound by external rules and regulations.

Women play many roles, such as good employees, good daughters, good wives, good mothers and so on, but behind these many roles, we only neglect ourselves.

Through background research, I found that the phenomenon of labeling women is becoming more and more common nowadays. As a design student, I began to think about whether I could convey my "voice" through my work. I wondered if I could make more people pay attention to this social issue through design. So I asked the question: what are girls made of?

In my project, I hope I have stepped out of my comfort zone and documented the events I have planned as a bystander, and used this as the main content to produce relevant designs.

Workshop

I organized a workshop on women called "What are girls made of" and I invited 15 girls from different countries to participate in the workshop. I invited 15 girls from different countries to participate in this workshop, and I chose the workshop format to reflect my theme because I believe that in the process of participating in the workshop, the participants can communicate, think, and produce their own unique works. This is a way for women to express their diversity and to be more creative and practical at the same time.

First, I designed a magic box, which included wool (in the color of the participant's choice), a clay sculpting tool, five colors of clay that I had previously chosen, and perforated cardboard, as well as a participant handbook for the workshop, which was designed to inform the participants of the workshop's theme and the process of participation.

During the previous process, the girls are also thinking about what they are really made of and what kind of person they are by remembering their own experiences. Each girl then creates an image of herself out of five colors of clay, which can be an image of her ideal self or an image of what she thinks she is in her mind.

The girls experiment with plants to express themselves, and various life experiences are used as a variety of elements to make up the oddly shaped images of women's plants.

When we came to this workshop, these sculptures that we created without external forces (outside influences) were actually quite rich. Some people wish they were flowers, some people wish they were trees, some people wish they were grass. In the absence of secular stereotypes and demands for female perfection, our inner selves are actually very different, and the lives and images we all wish for are also very different. These are some of the ways women see and think about themselves without external guidance.

Book design

My books are mostly about workshop documentation it was designed in two parts, the first part was a printed book, and I used the same clay for the cover of the book, for unity with the theme as well as to add to the heaviness of the book cover.

The second part is a printed text and visual poster of the stereotypes of women I researched, which I placed inside a sphere. The traditional book and the text inside the orb complemented each other to form a more interesting whole.

I put the words written with stereotypes of women inside the ball, hoping that in such a form the reader will feel the process of unraveling the note step by step while reading these words,

pulling out of the cocoon, as if women are slowly awakening to their consciousness. These thoughts of women's desire to break stereotypes and remove labels were not formed all at once, but have taken a long time and the efforts of many people to lead to the fact that most women now dare to express themselves and be their true selves.

And I want to seal these stereotypes of women inside the ball. Being sealed feels like people's solidified thinking, and opening this ball seems to be breaking society's solidified thinking about women.

Feedback

Finally, I shared my book as well as the video with some female viewers and gathered their feedback. I think this feedback can be a true reflection of their attitudes towards female stereotypes, and it can also help me understand the significance of my design.