Fighting Body Norms with Buttons
By: Lauren Sawhook
Purpose
In today's society there is so much pressure for women to be thin, have a flat stomach, and essentially fit one beauty standard. This ultimately leads to a never-ending fight between women and their bodies, doing no matter what they have to do to fit the beauty standard, even if that means fighting what is healthiest for their bodies. I am subverting the modeling, and health industry, and the idea of a “perfect”, or ideal body type that every woman must fit into.
Audience
Goals
My target audience is women ages 18-40, as that will be the audience I will be able to most easily access to give buttons to, as well as it is a very important age in which women are trying to find or re-discover themselves, which could lead to them battling with their bodies.
My goals for this project are to clearly communicate to my audience what I am trying to subvert with my final design artifact, create something that people will use as a reminder to themselves, and create a design that people like and would be willing and happy to put on their backpack or bag. I also hope to truly subvert the industry which I am trying to fight against, and change the way people look at their bodies.
My Design
The design artifact that I created to subvert the above concept was a process, and I documented the different phases of my design until I ultimately got the final design that I shared with an audience. Below I will go through the process until I finally share the final artifact that I landed on in the end.
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As I went through the brainstorming process, I decided on a really interesting form of craftivism I could utilize in order to be subversive. I ultimately landed on the concept of a collage of general fat-shaming and body-standardizing magazine covers that would act as the background to a reminder to women and anyone who needs it to stop fighting their bodies. The designs below were my first draft of this collage, but ultimately I decided later that the background being so colorful was distracting from the message, leading me to my next iteration phase.
Phase 1
Moving on to phase 2 of the design process, after further thought about my artifact serving as a reminder to those fighting their body every day, I realized it would be very impactful to translate my final design into buttons. This way everyone could carry that reminder around with them daily whether it be on their backpack or a tote bag. With that realization though I realized there were still changes that needed to be made to the design before I could move on to making the buttons. I decided to solve my initial problem of the background being too bold, by adding a black-and-white filter over it to let the colorful message stand out. Additionally, I added a new phrase based on feedback I was given which carried a more positive tone within the message, as that may be some people's preference. This also allowed me the unique opportunity to see which design people gravitated towards more and gather feedback as to why.
Phase 2
Phase 3:
Button Time
Now that I was satisfied with the design to put into the buttons, it was time to go through the process of making the buttons. I decided that I would make 15 buttons for each design, totaling 30 buttons, and I made sure to document the process. I made these buttons using a button maker at my university library, which was a really fun process that made me excited to distribute my buttons.
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Final Button Designs
Reactions
I was really happy with how my buttons turned out, so it was time to distribute them and see how people reacted. My college department holds an expo in which students show off their work every year, so I figured it would be the perfect opportunity to hand out buttons and get people's feedback in return. Overall I handed out about 22/30 buttons, and I received feedback from 15 people.
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ETBD Expo
At the Expo, I shared with people my project purpose, explained my design, and had the two button designs laid out separately so that people were making a conscious decision as to which button they preferred. After they took a button, I kindly asked that people either fill out a quick Google form I created or that they write down some feedback on paper that I had there. Below is the feedback I received from that:
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Google form feedback
Paper feedback
Reaction Overview
Based on what I saw at the expo, and the feedback I received, to my surprise the "Stop Fighting Your Body" button was the more popular option between the two. People really enjoyed hearing about my project and based on feedback, it was definitely a message people needed to hear beyond myself. The ETBD Expo was the perfect place to reach my target audience and gain insight into people's preferences and perspectives towards my design artifact. In general, most people were excited to see what my project was about when they saw my buttons laying out, but it was clear I selected the correct audience, as most men steered away from my project. I got the opportunity to talk to a lot of people about why they picked the button they did, and one thing I didn't notice in the design process is that the colors popped more on the most popular button, leading to people being more drawn to that one automatically. This was very insightful, and something I never noticed when looking at it myself, thus why feedback and reaction are so important to gain a full picture of the reactions.
Thoughts
While people's responses were all very positive, there was definitely something surprising to me about the results. While the "Stop Fighting Your Body" button is my personal favorite, going into the Expo I assumed that people would heavily gravitate towards my "Grow With Your Body" buttons instead. The reason I thought that is because, in today's conversation surrounding body positivity, there tends to be a heavier usage of kind and gentle language which pertains more to the lesser popular button. I think this difference in how people reacted is based on the fact that while color played a role, people resonated more with the concept of being in a battle with one's body, thus reiterating the problem at hand I worked to subvert through this project.
What did I learn?
There is something so powerful about designing something for a cause that you are passionate about, and for me, it was hard, but nice at the same to see that I am not alone in my struggles. Many women are in a battle with their bodies every single day, and although people don't always talk about it, it doesn't mean that you are alone in that fight. Through this process, I learned that designing something to subvert a standard that affects people every single day is extremely rewarding, and I will continue to use my voice and my skills as a designer to bring attention to the issues that I feel really matter, and ultimately I learned that I have the power to make a difference through design.