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- Lauren O’ Sullivan
Lauren
O’ Sullivan
Be You But Better
Lauren O’ Sullivan’s practice is centered around how the digital revolution is creating an internet-driven 21st century girl. Social media and mass media are creating an ever-increasing pressure surrounding girl culture. There is an overwhelming unrealistic expectation of what it means to be a woman on online platforms. Lauren aims to convey the exhaustion of keeping up with appearances, the perks, and pitfalls of being a woman and the dark twisted realms of girlhood. The imagery of serpents and demons is used repeatedly to depict themes of temptation, desire, deception, consumption and to showcase the influence social media has. All imagery and text surrounding the female characters are inspired by social media and magazines. The use of the colour pink is prominent within the work as society strongly associates the colour with femininity. Since a very young aged woman, Lauren has been conditioned to evaluate their physical appearance against others, now with an image-driven platform such as Instagram it coincides with female anxiety in the internet age.