As I leave my adolescence behind I find myself thinking more and more about the experience of girlhood I expected in comparison to the one I experienced. Exploring the monolithic concept of “girlhood” and its mythologies as both an experience that is universal yet specific to one's identity, I contemplate my growth throughout the span of my adolescence in relation to my perceptions of body and self-image. Evaluating how I and by consequence, my body, have changed over the years and the role vanity, spectatorship, and performing femininity have played in mediating my concept of self-worth.

In this work, I am interested in looking and the act of looking, how my identity is mediated through the omnipresence of a gaze or spectator; the act of being gazed upon, being the object of the gaze, and confrontation of the gaze. I have found that there is a level of critique and pressure that is present throughout the entirety of girlhood but becomes tangible and realized once girls cross the threshold of adolescence into adulthood. Incorporating tangible examples of bodily change, recontextualizing home footage, and performing under the gaze of the camera, I create a work that is reflective of my nostalgia for a girlhood I never got to experience, one not colored by undertones of dysmorphia.