Bridge 3: Taxonomy

(work in progress)

Theme: Gender

Link to all the pictures taken/drawn for Bridge 3

Complete Taxonomy:

What location did you visit for your visual research and what did you find?  

The first place that I visited when researching as a Papyrus greeting card store. I wasn’t sure what direction to go in regarding the taxonomy and was hoping that the card store would help guide the rest of my search. After that, I decided to continue down a consumeristic path and I visited a Micheals craft store. After that, I went to Rosevelt field mall, knowing that they would have a variety of stores that I could probably find more fuel for my taxonomy. At the mall, I visited Spencer’s because of they always have a variety of LGBT+ shirts and items, before even entering the store I saw a tank that said ‘Out of the closest’ in their window. The last place I visited was a Key Food (specifically to take pictures of fruit).  In my initial research, I also included pictures I  already had and pictures of a couple of LGBT+ related items that I own.

How did the locations you visited expand/broaden/deepen your understanding of your topic? 

The locations that I visited inspired me to look at not only the way that the media depicts LGBT+ youth and the way that LGBT+ youth are treated (what I’ve already  been looking into) but to also look  at the way that companies market products to the LGBT+ and the line between LGBT+ marketing and rainbows for the sake of rainbows.  The locations also inspired me to look at the way that color (color as in the rainbow, not skin color) is seen in our society because the rainbow, or just the colors of the rainbow, is the main symbol used by the LGBT+ community.

List the symbols, metaphors and visual references you put in your taxonomy and explain how/why they are relevant/important to your topic.  

The main symbol I used throughout my taxonomy was the rainbow.
Through the photographic aspect of my taxonomy, I explored fruits because of the way that the word ‘fruit’ it is used as slang for a gay man. I also explored flowers both because of how colorful they are and because of how gendered flowers are in society and colorful snacks associated with children (goldfish and frosting) to touch on how though rainbows are an LGBT+ symbol they are also heavily tied to children.
Through the illustrated aspect of my taxonomy, I mainly explored items that were marketed towards the LGBT+ community, but I took away the color to see if they still felt representative of the LGBT+ community.

What did you learn from Monday’s critique about your taxonomy that was new or helpful?

Elliot and Trudy told me that the black and white aspect of the illustration allows the pictures to be able to be any queer flag rather than just the rainbow.  They also pointed out the objects in black in white are not just directly related to being LGBT+ but also to self-expression. Trudy suggested that I use more heavily saturated color photos next time.

10 Most important questions from  the ’20 questions’ activity:

1.  If I’m going to explore LGBT+ teens, what issues related to the LGBT+ community should I be focusing on?
2. Would gay teens and young adults be better off if there were more sober LGBT+ spaces?
3. Are LGBT+ people seemingly more open to piercings, hair dye, kink talk, and choices along that road because of the LGBT+ community, the
   confidence gained from coming out, the way that subcultures overlap, a different variable, or are they not more open and it’s just stereotyping?
4. Where is the line between a company genuinely supporting gay rights/ the LGBT+ community and just adding rainbows into their collections for profit?  Should I explore that?
5. Flowers are seen as a strong symbol fo feminity but getting flowers for someone else is seen as a very masculine thing to do: how can the same symbol/item have different connotations for people of different genders?
6.  If I’m going to explore the role of color/flags in the LGBT+ community, what do I need to know about the history of the rainbow flag and the way that it has evolved over time?
7. Why is it that things like bright colors and unicorns are often associated with both toddler and the LGBT+ community? Does it matter that unicorns are a bit phallic?
8. Do humans subconsciously react to rainbows in a different way than how they react to singular colors (on a neurological level or from a psychological stand-point)?
9. How does the way that straight people see rainbow flags and symbols differ from the way that queer/gay LGBT+ people see rainbow flags and symbols?
10. Should there be an LGBT+ symbol that is not color based (a sexuality based symbol since there are a few gender-based symbols out there) because without color the rainbow flag is just stripes of gray?