Katherine Dykman - Senior Project

September 25, 2009

Hey everybody!  

This week I e-mailed multiple people to try to find an outside mentor who has some relation to women's rights.  I e-mailed Kate Mueth, Clare Coss, Blanche Wiesencook and Kathy Engel expecting at least two, but probably three of the four to decline.  Kate Mueth did declined, but Kathy Engel, Clare Coss and Blanche Wiesencook all accepted.  I scheduled a meeting with Clare and Blanche on October 10th to go over what I have, and for me to chat about women's rights and get a better understanding of it.  Kathy Engel replied saying she was available any time after next week but I have yet to make a meeting with her.  I also send out an e-mail to Eric Fischl asking him to be an outside mentor, because I know he had an interesting take on women wearing pants in relation to art.  (He is a family friend.)

Next week I will hopefully have a mentor that I can meet with and bounce ideas off of for how to start my main essay on women's rights.  I'm hoping that I might be able to finish the main essay by mid-October, because a few colleges require an alternative essay.  I need to do some more research on women in the war time.  Other than that, I have nothing else to report.  

Ta-ta till next week.

September 18, 2009

Hey everyone, this is my first blog entry for my Senior Project!  Originally, I started out with the idea that I would do a project on the history of pants in America, and their general development.  My product was going to be one paper and a set of paintings and/or drawings of a wide variety of pants.  However, once I realized what a broad topic pants were, I realized that the most obvious subcategory was women’s rights.

My current project is a study of women and the wearing of pants and how wearing pants parallels the power of women in society both politically and perceptually.  Because this is still such a large topic, I narrowed it down further to American society.  This was slightly problematic because around the time that pants started to become acceptable- or at least not incriminating- for women, European designers were the first to take a stab at making women’s wear more flexible and more masculine.

My product is going to be a long essay, or a series of smaller essays on women’s rights paralleled in pants.  I know for sure that the main essay will focus on the shift from women staying at home and wearing dresses to moving into the work place and wearing pants.  A side essay might be about how a large percentage of professional women feel they have to wear pants or as designer Martine Sitbon says, have ‘lost the habit’ of wearing feminine clothing altogether.  The loss of the female form, and pants moving the female into a more masculine, stronger presence might be another essay topic I would like to focus on.

As for how my project will be presented, I am still undecided.  I am not sure if I would like to make a book with my essays and maybe some photography to go along with it, or if I would just like to have the essays.  At the moment I am leaning towards not doing the book, because I think compiling a book would restrict what topics my essay could go to.

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