Aimee and Hannah

This is my first shoot, starting with the three year old girls, I am trying to capture children from as young as three already being taught to be like a woman, even though it's through play, such as playing babies, pretend cooking and ironing and wearing Mummy's shoes and jewellery. Although I believe it to be innocent and copying Mum and learning through play, it is interesting to me even at this age young girls are behaving like a woman!

Nancy Honey

Nancy Honey makes photograph's that asks questions what it is to be a woman today, photograph's that explore the influencesthat have come up through childhood and express fears that project into the future. "Some constructions of feminism have evolved their own rules about appearance that can be nearly as oppressive as the old stereotypes" Nancy Honey, 1990

Roberta Ridolfi for Vice Magazine took the above images, in a series called ‘Freewheelin’. The model has been captured being both playful and sexual in her youth. The series consists of the girl in landscape environments and at times is dressed in a swimsuit and looking seductive and appearing older than her age.

Inspirations - Sally Mann

Sally Mann has influenced me, her photographs of her own children in ‘Immediate Family’ have been described as controversial and she’s been accused of manipulating her young children. Mann’s black and white images of her children are beautiful yet there is a certain level of discomfort viewing some of them. The expressions in the children’s eyes can be intense but often show them free and even naked, they do implicate a certain voyeurism and can make the viewer feel like an intruder.

Th

Too much, too young?

To continue with my theory there will be a series of photograph’s of girls and women at different ages throughout their life, the younger girls will be shown at points on their life where they are already trying to be older than they are. The older women will be captured trying to be more youthful. I have already started to develop this concept last year with young girls aged between 10 and 13.

“ It’s taken for granted these days that children aren’t what they were. They are, thanks to the creation of the tween advertising market, more sharply aware of self-image.”

Emma Brockes, The Guardian

This part of the project is ‘Too Much, Too Young?’ A social documentary photographic essay; commenting on the pressures young girls face as they are growing up. The mass media have been criticising retailers, celebrities and parent’s for allowing children to be over-sexualised and exploited. Are children discovering too much, too young?

This work has already been exhibited and I found the public response very interesting, there was a certain uneasy feeling from some viewers but also an understanding that this is how girls feel in today’s society. To develop my concept and complete it through various ages of girls and women would be a fulfilling ambition of mine.

Too much, too young?

I am intrigued as to why girls may want to be older and women younger, is there a peer pressure put on women in today’s society to be youthful? Do young girls think that being older is going to be more fulfilling and exciting? Is there an ideal age and if so what is it?

I have started researching this with a Video Art piece I have produced previously for a BBC big screen commission. ‘What age would you like to be?’, where I asked various girls and women what age they would like to be, I found that the majority of young girls wanted to be older and older women wanted to be younger.