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She
Fall 2019 Special Edition
As women, there is a certain pressure to perform, to look a certain way, to act a certain way in order to live up to this idea of femininity. This idea of performance can manifest itself in different ways. For our third issue of She Magazine, we wanted to explore this idea of performance, and how it shapes the female experience. As well as how people rebel against, reclaim it, or reject it completely. Performance can take place in the form of gender, political, and self-expression. As artists, performance often becomes mutually exclusive to our craft, this issue seeks to understand how female artists especially incorporate aspects of performative ideals into their work. Performance is most blatantly defined as the act of staging or presenting yourself in a certain way. Whether that is through literal performance, as an actor or a dancer, or personal performance, in the way we express ourselves, or artistic performance, how we exhibit our aesthetics visually.

Did you know that less than 4 percent of artists on display in the Modern Art section of the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art are women? But 76% of the nudes depicted are of females? Since the beginning of art history, women have been cut out of the picture. We started this magazine because the bias when it comes to gender in the art industry is becoming a disparity that can’t be ignored. Despite how revolutionized our world has become, women are still considered the ideal subject. Women are portrayed as passive objects of beauty. An object to be desired. A mannequin. A prop. They are encouraged to strip themselves of intellect and become visual commodities rather than strong individuals with voices and ideas of their own. We are fascinated by the power of the gazes, and how the male and female gazes vastly differ from each other based on the context of history. The goal is to find a middle ground between the two, to be able to reclaim the tropes and norms created by the male gaze and turn them into something new and authentic. There cannot only be one way of representation, it is as novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie said, “the danger of a single story.” Women and girls should be empowered by images, and they should be able to find themselves within them. While the beauty of women should not be ignored or devalued, it should not define her or objectify her. She Magazine is a space for women in art to speak their truth through a visual medium. We want this magazine to serve as a platform for women artists, a chance for them to tell their own stories through artistic means without the need for male approval and without the fear of retribution.

                                                 – Meghan Marshall and Clara Reed



Back Cover: Isabel Damberg

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