Amanda Gao
Amanda Gao is a 22-year-old Montreal-based student who is passionate about performance studies, art management, and the entertainment industry. Her hobbies include reading, drawing, painting, and fashioning little art projects for fun. Through her capstone, Amanda is exploring the performance of femininity, examining the complexities and societal norms that surround gender and femininity. Her main goal is to better understand herself and the meaning of womanhood as well as how every day performances impact the life of those around her.
Title of Capstone Project
Performing Femininity in the 21st Century
Description of Capstone Project
This project comporting two parts examines the question: "How has the digital distribution of the performance of femininity affected/influenced/formed the conception of gender identity and expression in 21st century?" The first part features the presentation of a video compiling the perception of femininity from women of my immediate surrounding, including myself. Each interviewee answers to the questions: "What is something that represents femininity to you?" and "What is the most feminine aspect about you?" The second part features a 9 steps guidebook to help people find and perform their femininity. The guide also includes an analysis of the influence of YouTube, social media, and the evolution of the concept of femininity based on my personal experience as I mostly learned to be a woman from role models online. The explanations for these steps also incorporates concepts of the body, from Legacy Russell's "Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto", and (digital) surveillance from Michel Foucault's "Panopticon" amongst other theories on digitization and feminism.
What Inspired Your Project?
Can short hair be feminine? What is femininity? Do I have to be feminine to be a woman? Can I call myself a woman? Here are the questions that intrigued me in the past few years and led to my exploration of femininity as a performance, glitch feminism, digital surveillance and the liberation of gender identity.