breast augmentation naples

- hello and welcome tothe i3 lecture series, hosted by the masters indigital photography program at the school of visual arts. we're thrilled to welcomeartist cat del buono as tonight's guest speaker. cat holds a ba from boston college and an mfa from the school of visual arts in photography, video and related media. she also attended nyu'stisch school of the arts

graduate film program. trained as a photographer and filmmaker, del buono creates video installations and public happenings that focus on gender and social issues. her works have been shownin the us and abroad, including at the bronx museum,vetlanda museum, sweden, fonlad digital arts festival, portugal, blue sky gallery, fountain art fair,

chashama nyc and moca miami. her awards include thebronx museum aim program, the ise cultural foundation grant, baang burne new works grant,awesome foundation grant, nyfa strategic stipend and thesva alumni association award. she's been an artist in residence at the artcenter/south florida and thegallery la pan in barcelona. her ongoing project, voices, has received

extensive extensivepress coverage including the art newspaper, miami herald, college art associationand the charlotte observer. so please help me give a warm welcome to cat del buono to our lecture series. (audience applauds) - thanks. hi, thanks for that, tom. so as tom said, i have a background in,

i have to have a backgroundin photography and film. so what i was interested in was kind of combining the two mediums, in a sense. i'm gonna show you someof like the earlier stuff that works with than and then move on to what i've been doing lately. so this was called tears. and what it is i wantedto kinda take the photo to the like next level,and for me that was

having something that looked like a photo but would have a little movement in it. so i'm gonna show you this. but see how it's displayedlike a photograph. it's mounted, it's framed. it has a mat. i don't like that plug there by the way. and it just has a subtlemovement, as you can see. you guys probably know this reference.

this is based off of manray's photograph called tears. and i just basically gave her life. so there's just a slightmovement of her blinking. and this was shown at fountain art fair in miami and new york. and she is actually another sva alumnus. so that's it. i mean, it just mimics the photograph but gives her life, so she moves.

another one that i did that was similar to that whole concept. this is an actual photograph from the 1933 us attorney's office. and in that photo is myhusband's grandfather and thomas dewey, if you guys know thomas dewey of dewey beats truman. he's in the center. and when i saw this photo,

(clock ticks) i don't know, i kind of wantedto also bring it to life. can you hear the clock? all right, so i just, i don't know, i really had this urgeto bring it to life, again, bring that photographlike one step further by adding a slight movement. and then, so it kind offeels like they're waiting for their picture to be taken, you know?

they're just waiting. they're stuck in thistime zone or something. so that's that. then i also becameinterested in going beyond just single channel video,so i started doing like multiple projections andtrying to create environments for my visitors, my viewers,so that they could experience whatever i wanted to show them. and this project is, thisis in my mom's village

in a small town, likeoutside of naples in italy, where time just kind of stood still. that in the, i couldn'tfind the video, i apologize. but that is a donkey pulling a cart. so it's that kind of, like, they're still a little bit backwards. so in the installation, it would come up that right-hand screen, the donkey came up and then he goes up that way.

and then you just seedifferent people in the town, doing their dailyactivities like buying fruit at the market or justlike the elderly people hanging out and just chatting or singing. and the whole idea is again to have people feel like they're right there in the town, experiencing like what i would see when i'm there visiting my family. another example of using multiple screens,

i did this documentary. i grew my hair really, reallylong, like stupid long, specifically because iwanted to cut it all off and have a wig made forsomebody who needed it. so i was looking into locksof love, and it turns out they throw away a lot of the hair. if it's not long enough,if it's been like dyed, or if it's damaged,they just throw it out. so that was already like eh.

and i wanted to documentthe whole process. so it just happened around that time that my cousin's wife got cancer. and she needed a wig, so i was gonna cut off all my hair and have a wig made for her, 'cause she was really into long hair. and i'm gonna show youjust a little quick clip of this documentary.

it uses multiple screens,but it touches on this idea of like long hair in females, 'cause her whole thing was all about, she's all about long hair. and there's a, you know, whenwomen cut off their hair, people react to that. why did she do that? did she just lose her boyfriend? or is she trying to make a statement?

or whatever. it does make a statementfor whatever reason, but we'll get into that. so this is just a quickclip i'm gonna show you. (violin music) it all started as a way to save money by not going to the hairdresser. but then it became more of alet's see how long it can get. middle of the back, then lower back,

and now my hair has becomemore than just hair. it's like having a pet. or a really long scarf with you, all the time, everywhere you go. people love it, but they have no idea what it's like to keep it. they're so distracted by the hair itself that they aren't lookingat the whole picture. me with the hair doesn't work.

i noticed i was losing a lot of hair, whether it was in theshower, when i'm combing it with conditioner orjust all over the place. and i thought i need to save these hairs, 'cause they're so long, andif i'm gonna cut my hair and have a wig made out of it, those hairs actually would come in handy. - i have very mixed feelings about you cutting your hair off.

i'm very nervous abouthow you're gonna look. i'm very comfortable and usedto you looking a certain way. i think that you're very, very beautiful with your long, curly hair. - all right, so that's just a clip. here's just some stillshots from the video. i just want to say that was so much fun. just cutting my own hairoff was so much fun. i don't know if you guys

ever had barbies when you were little, and you wanted to cut theirhair, but maybe you didn't, because you didn't wantto destroy them forever. that's what that felt like. it was so much fun. anyway, so here's another still shot. i loved it. it was so freeing, and myhead tingled for like a month. all right, another projecti did that used more

than just a single channel video. this was two channels. it was on two separate monitors. oh, by the way, sorry, that documentary was done while i was at sva. this one, as well, wasdone while i was at sva. it was a two-channel videoand what i did was ride on the four train thewhole way, back and forth, for like a couple of weeks.

and i would go up topeople, and i would ask them if i could do their video portrait. and i was shocked thatmost of them said okay. so i would film them, and then a the end, i would say, "tell me something "that you like about yourself." 'cause at the time, iwas watching nip/tuck. i don't know if you guys remember that. do you remember when theclients would come in,

they'd be like, "tell me what you don't like about yourself." so i kind of wanted todo something positive. why do we got to think about what we don't like about ourselves? tell me something you like about yourself. so it was actually a good experience. it was a little scary attimes, but, i don't know. i really had a niceconnection with the people,

and i also found, i wanted to test myself. like, do i know who theyare just by looking at them? can i tell anything about them? most of the time, i was wrong. so it was an interestingexperiment, but i have a quick little clip for you here as well. you're gonna be seeing a lot of video. so i'm just warning you. - [voiceover] my height,which is six feet tall.

i ain't got no kids. i'm 25 years old, light-skinned, black. (bell chimes) - [voiceover] everything, i'm an artist, i'm a writer. i have my own cds that i write my own song, sing it myself. - [voiceover] ladies andgentlemen, for your safety. - [voiceover] i thinki'm kind, and i listen

to what people have to say. and i'm humorous. - [voiceover] i like that i'm smart, and i'm confident about myself and that i'm independent. - [voiceover] my son's a bit disabled, but it's fun, you know, just exploring everything with him. and he loves the train.

so it's like his favorite thing. he mocks all the closingdoors and everything. (laughs) so it's fun and i think that's what i like about myself most. - all right. this is another videoinstallation that i did. it actually originated in 2003. i did it for the dumbo arts festival,

which is no longer, which is kind of sad. and i projected it on to the east river. so the whole idea behind this was that since the river's so polluted, we're never gonna see fishand people swimming around. so what i want to do is likeif it can't happen in reality, i was gonna make it happen virtually. so i projected it on to the river. and then i started showingit in different cities.

recently, i just showed it at the currents new media festival, out in new mexico. and so now it's become moreof a what our future may be, what our future interactionswith nature may be, 'cause we're destroying our nature, so maybe we're gonna haveto experience it virtually. who knows? - which one do you like?

- this. - that one. (voices chattering) (woman laughs) - that's very intriguing. - what is it? - a second television program. - they're fish. - they are fish.

- you're all looking at the fish? - right! - yeah, you was. - ariel, look at that. look at that. that one's looking at fishand looking back at us. - marty, you clown, fish succumb to this. - i'm sorry, i'm sorry. - so, and then there's likepeople that swim by and whatnot.

then i did a residency in miami in 2009. and i noticed around me, there was a lot of plastic surgery. and i'm going to show you this next slide. even the mannequins hadthese ginormous breasts, and it was so obvious to me that there was a specific beauty standard that i was seeing a lotof, even with young women, like, the big lips and the big boobs

and everybody was very consciousabout what they look like. so that started to getme thinking a little bit. i'm gonna show you some other stuff. i went to this drake concert. i don't know why, but, and the girls were all wearing these short, short skirtsand high, high heels. they could barely walk. and my only way of dealing with it that

evening was to takephotos and video of this, because i was like whatis going, where am i? i was just, this was a few years ago, and it's more common now, i guess. i was just like what's going on here. so these are just some of the shots. and then i started realizing, you know, it wasn't just happening in miami. it's happening all over the place.

everything we see ontelevision, music videos. i'm gonna play this for you, too. just a sample of what we're seeing on tv and the media. i mean, constantly, we see this so often that we don't even think about it. we're so numb to this. it's become like the norm. there's, i mean, i mean even kids

with the, okay, the beauty pageant stuff. i don't know. anyway, so as you can see, women are being portrayed in a specific way, okay. they're conforming to a specific look. and they're playing a specific role. and to me, this was infuriating. i want to show you one other example. this is italian tv.

i think you guys kinda get the idea. you've got like, these women who, i mean, you would think you switched over to like a softcore porn channel, but this is like family time tv, during lunchtime and dinnertime, and it was like game shows and talk shows. and they would take abreak for these women to come out and do their little thing.

i mean, it was, like, bizarre. and it's no one even thought about it, but an interesting thing isthat i found out recently, they found out that there's been a spike in domestic violence and in sexism. i think there's a relationship there, just putting it out there. so all this stuff that iwas noticing, whatever, and getting infuriated about.

i wanted to somehow dealwith it in my works. so how do you do thatwithout alienating people, without pointing fingers and getting mad and being the angry feminist or whatever. i'm like all right, i'll try humor. i did, this was one ofthe first videos i did. i did something before this. for me this was like what plastic surgery looks like and feels like to me.

so i'm gonna play you this. ("the girl from ipanema") (air blows) (balloon squeaks) so, that was that. so then i was at thisresidency in barcelona, and i continued with thiswhole plastic surgery idea and finding the cheaper way to keep up with the trends in plastic surgery.

so this one's called face lift. (classical music) (tape crackles) (man laughs) looks good, right? all right, then i didanother video, very simple, that was kind of triggered from statistics i was reading and informationi was getting about how girls and boys startoff kind of the same.

what do you want to be when your grow up? pretty much the same. they feel confident about themselves. they're going along in the same direction. then when they hit puberty,the girls start veering towards what they look likeas being a focus, right? that's 'cause of whatsociety's telling us. and so this short video,simple short video, it focuses on that andhow the girls and females

begin to be told what theirvalue is in our society. (piano music) (balloons pops) so that's what we're left with. and i did this reallyquick little animation while i was in barcelona as well with a fellow artist in residence. and, oh, i'll just show it to you. (birds chirp)

(bulb buzzes) (balloons squeak) (seesaw creaks) (whistles) (seasaw creaks) (clothing rips) (monkey screeches) (woman screams) so, this was in, i spenta lot of time in miami.

i spent like, i think was it like four or five winters there. (clicks) that's what you want to do. and i did this exhibit that was kind of like an interactive sort of thing. and i had these bins out for people to choose what differentbreast sizes they might want. and so they can havetheir own enhancements

for free and very cheaply done. and so, i'm gonna show you a clip. i kind of put a littlething together that shows. i hope this works, 'causei specifically edited this. ♫ oh, sinner man, where you gonna run to ♫ sinner man, where you gonna run to ♫ where you gonna run to ♫ all along them day ♫ well i run to the rock, please hide me

♫ i run to the rock, please hide me ♫ i run to the rock, please ♫ i run to the rock ♫ - oh, so we took it out into the streets. ♫ all along them day ♫ - with a little flash mobon lincoln road in miami. yeah, i went over that. and people, they laughed. they thought it was funny and whatnot,

but they also got the message. they understood what we weredoing, what we were saying. and then i was invitedby the pool art fair to do it in new york at the met. so it was all like guerrilla,and i thought for sure we were gonna get arrested or something, but, i mean, they just smiled at us and completely ignored us. but i guess, new yorkersare like yeah, whatever.

♫ it was bleedin' ♫ so i run to the river, it was boilin' ♫ i run to the sea, it was boilin' ♫ so i run to the lord,please hide me lord ♫ don't you see me prayin' ♫ don't you see me down here prayin' ♫ then i moved on to , hold on, street posters. i created a street art group.

we called ourselvesrefemme and made up posters and went around and plasteredthem all over wynwood in miami, which is like the arts district. and we got written up inthe papers a little bit. but it was a lot of fun,and the whole idea was i want to do this campaign about not getting plastic surgery. so if you guys know ofthe most interesting man in the world when he says,"stay thirsty, my friends."

this is stay small, my friends. so i wanted to use images of celebrities who have small breastsalready, so people who, like me, have smallbreasts, feel okay about it. and we're not gonna goout and succumb to these trends of getting breast implants, which is a dangerous, unnecessary surgery. so there's nothing wrong, nothingagainst big breasts, okay. it's just, it's the anti-surgery thing,

which i'll show you the little logo we put on the bottom, no surgery. so we did those. we plastered thosearound a number of times. and then we also did acampaign on last name equality. i don't know if you could read that. it says, "change my name? "i'm getting married, not adopted." so this is something thati feel strongly about,

but i won't get into it right now. but you're going to see more of this. so, and this is anotherone, if you guys don't know. this is amelia earhart. and she was married to george putnum. so somehow mrs. george putnumjust doesn't sound right. then we did this interactive performance. i called it beauty box.

this was also in miami. and it was done during art basel. and i worked with a couple of friends who collaborated with me. and we put on lab coats, and we were pretending like we're doctors. we're there to give you a consultation. that was, you know, we hadall these props with us. ready to scare people.

(audience laughs) it was under the pretensethat you're gonna come in for a consult and we're gonna tell you what you got to fix, right? but instead what we did was, and i told them you have to be honest. that was our thing. we have to be honest. so we looked at everybody,and we honestly picked out

everything that we saw thatwas beautiful about them. so on their exterior,i mean, there's so much you can see in people, by the way. there's just so muchbeauty that doesn't conform to what our standards are now. but again that's arbitrary, right? who decides what's beautiful? so we would do that, but we also talked about their inner beauty,which my friends who

helped me this were really good at. they like really got to people. they're like, "wow,how did you know that?" so that was really interesting to see. and we had both women and men come in. and i made up little prescription pads. and i would write you are perfect just the way you are and give it to them. and we gave out little medalsfor being a natural beauty.

so women came in scared butleft feeling really good about themselves and like, "oh my god, "this is the best thing." and some women, like, were teary-eyed. so it was a really interesting interaction that we had with them. and what was interesting too was the men who came in came in very confident. see the difference?

like women are ready to be picked apart and told what's wrong with them. the men came in with this confidence. so what we did with them we talked a little bit about theirexterior, but we tried to get in a little moredeeper with these guys, 'cause there's the wholeidea of masculinity. there's, you guys, withthis macho whatever, so we tried to get in a little deeper

and talk about who they were inside. and again, my friendswere pretty good at this. and this, recently, idid this for chashama, which is a non-profit art organization. they had a big gala, andit was in times square. so we just did thatthere, and people love it. so it's amazing how justsaying a couple nice things to somebody can really pick up their mood. so just like the previousworks were influenced

by what i was seeing in miami,with the whole beauty thing, the next works i'm gonna show you are also influenced by what iwas seeing in the news. i did this piece that was, do you guys remember sandra fluke? she was a georgetown universitystudent, law student, and she testified in front of congress about women's reproductiverights and contraception. she got so much flack from conservatives

and like rush limbaugh. i mean, the stuff they were saying about her was just disgusting. so i did a whole video thatevery time she's talking, something would interrupther, and i would use clips of what rush limbaugh was saying. so that was one of them. and then i'm sure you allremember what politicians were saying when it cameto rape and abortion.

and how women don't have aright to have an abortion even in the case ofrape, blah, blah, blah. i'm gonna show you a fewclips, and i removed, okay, let me explain. i took actual clips of politicians, which happen to be white males, and talking about whatthey think about rape and what they thinkabout abortion, whatever. anyway, and i put itside-by-side with clips

of rape scenes from movies. so you hear them, and you see the scene. you hear them, you see the scene. so i did that on purpose to kind of like put this into context, okay. what are you guys talking about? so hopefully, this plays. and i'm gonna show you a couple of clips of what the politicians said.

- this contraceptive thing, mygosh, it's such inexpensive. back in my days, they used bayeraspirin for contraceptions. the gals put it between their knees, and it wasn't that costly. (breathes heavily) - it seems to me, first ofall, from what i understand from doctors, that's really rare. if it's a legitimate rape,the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.

(man whoops) - [cat] and my favorite. - the right approach is toaccept this horribly created, in the sense of rape, but nevertheless, gift, in a very broken way,the gift of human life, and accept what god is giving to you. as you know, we have to, in lots of different aspects of our life, we have horrible things happen.

i can't think of anything more horrible, but nevertheless, we have to make the best out of a bad situation. - so, and it goes on. there's a lot of these. okay, and remember, hewas running for president, just a reminder. so again, instead of getting angry again, i wanted to put that into my works.

but i don't know if you guys remember the steubenville thing thathappened in steubenville, ohio, with a young girl whowas passed out drunk. and these guys completelysexually assaulted her and videotaped and photographed, and it was like a big thing. so the reaction thatcolleges did after this, colleges, schools, website, whatever, they put out a list of advice for women

on how you could avoid being raped, okay. no one talked about how boys can not rape, but women, what you cando to avoid being raped. and the list that they had up there, a lot of it was ridiculous. like, one of them, i'mgonna show you a clip, but one of them talked aboutvomit and urinate yourself. tell them you're menstruating,so that, okay, whatever. so this was my reaction to that.

i took actual advice. i didn't make anything up. i took the actual advicethat i found online and on these college websites. and i had my actress play them out in a very like 1950sinstructional video way. so i'm gonna show you a couple clips. it's called how to not get raped. - [voiceover] try wearingclothing that's not easy

to remove like (bell dings) jumpsuits, overalls or by adding belts. (sparkling music) ponytails and long hair are easy to grab. so choose your hairstyle wisely. remember, your choice of footwear can make the difference betweengetting raped or getting away.

always bring a friend when you go out and tell them whereyou're going at all times. or always bring a dog. choose your venue wisely. no one will hear you screamfor help in a loud club. also, beware of bathrooms. many attacks occur there. (dance music) and remember, don't get drunk.

(record scratches) beware of vans. they're the number one rapist vehicle. - [voiceover] vroom, vroom. - [voiceover] if you encountera rapist in your car, drive into a lamppost or a dumpster. or if you're in the passenger seat, don't be afraid to jumpout of a moving car. remember, anything canbe used as a weapon.

tell your attacker that you have a disease or are menstruating. vomiting and urinating mayalso deter an attacker. fight like a psychotic cat. it's better to seem crazy than get raped. also leave a mark on yourrapist to make it easier for him to be caught later. make eye contact witha potential attacker. don't make eye contactwith a potential attacker.

don't put yourself in asituation where you can be raped. avoid isolation. avoid walking alone. avoid poorly lit areas. avoid elevators with a lone stranger. avoid giving a guy blue balls. - so you get the idea. so this, i put it up on youtube, just 'cause,

and someone emailed to me,and they're like, "hey, "did you see jezebel wrote about it." i'm like, "oh!" and so then i was gettingall these articles written about this from time.com,huffington post, buzzfeed. and then i was lookingthe numbers on youtube going up and up and up. i'm like, "oh my god, thisis, like, going viral. "good, let's get theconversation going here, right."

so i didn't hit a million yet, but maybe you all can help with that, which would be nice. so after that, i wanted to do a projecton domestic violence. and when i was at the whitney,it was a few years back, there was an installationby lorna simpson, which kinda had thiswhole grid of different, i don't know if you guysknow what i'm talking about.

i can't remember the name of it. i apologize, but it'sall these mouths, right. and it's all these lips. and they're all hummingalong to the same song. and that kinda clickedin my, i was like ah, this is how i can do thisproject and keep them anonymous, 'cause that was one ofthe issues i was having when i was talking to domesticviolence organizations and shelters was how doyou keep them anonomyous

if they don't want to expose who they are? 'cause a lot of these womenare in danger, so the mouth. and again in miami, i went to a shelter. i met with this woman. i showed her some of my other works. she trusted me. and i filmed the women therewho actually really wanted to talk about what they went through. and i wanted to hear aboutwhat they went through

but also how they got out. and i was really surprisedto hear how interested they were to share theirstories but also to reach out to other women who mightbe in similar situations. they really wanted to help others, which for me it was hard to understand. if i were in that situation, i don't know if i wouldbe able to talk about it, and i definitely don'tknow if i would be able

to reach out to someoneelse and try to help them. but anyway, this is whereit was first installed. it was in chicago about two years ago. just so you all know, i'vebeen going to different cities, working withdifferent organizations and collecting more and more stories. and then i install them. so what i did was i put each mouth, instead of having a grid pattern,

say like lorna simpson's piece, i wanted each mouth to be represented on a separate monitor, sothat it's like an individual. so they're lined up on thewalls of a gallery space. and when you walk in, youjust hear all these voices. and you can't make outwhat they're saying, but it's kind of overwhelming. and until you get closeenough to a monitor, you're not gonna hear their story.

so that kind of plays as a metaphor, too. here we are in our communities. we don't even know this is going on. you really don't know howmany people are affected. i mean, just after i did this project, i had a number of friends come up to me and tell me i was in adomestic violence situation. so we don't know that this is happening right under our noses.

so the metaphor is until you get close, you're not gonna know the story. so i've been taking itto different cities. i've been also addingpanel discussions now, because i want the community involved, so that they can hear from advocates and from survivors andfrom law enforcement, and we can talk aboutwell, what's going on, why it's happening andwhat can we do to stop it?

so this is the clip from chicago. - to me, i thought it was all my fault, and that it was just, i wouldmake excuses for my abuser. - when this was all gonnastop, i don't know if it was after he would burn me with hot water, locks me in a closet forthree days and didn't feed me, didn't allow me to leave, use the restroom or when he broke my face. and now i am just reallytrying to find who i am again.

i know this was a new thing for me. after 20 years, i didn'tknow that the love of my life was gonna basicallytake everything from me. - and you think it's going to change. it never changed. only thing that i have to change is me. i have to know i don'twant to be hurt anymore. (speaks in foreign language) - and i had my head bustedopen, and i was done,

pretty much done. - and slapping her and would usually end with my mother calling out my name to come save her. - so i never realized i was being abused until the day my fiance came into my room, put a pillow over my headand stabbed me 18 times. left me for dead in myapartment for over two hours, while he stood over my bleeding body.

- so that's just a samplingof some of the stories that you would see in my installation. that might happen, hold on. yeah, all right, sothat project has shown, that it showed last yearat the bronx museum. it showed at moca in north miami. chicago, i filmed in connecticut. i was out in orange county in california, and it's going to be inportland, oregon this july.

we're gonna do a paneldiscussion, the whole thing. i also did it down at winthrop university, which is in south carolina. and i think i wanna continue doing this at universities and dealingwith younger people, because even though, believe it or not, i filmed like six girlsthere who were teenagers who were in domestic violence situations or who had gotten out of them.

i mean, it starts young, buti think if i can reach out to the younger generation andtry to help them understand what a healthy relationship looks like and doesn't look like, i don't know, maybe we can nip this in the bud and prevent it from even happening, 'cause we have a lotof people who take care of the women after the fact, but we're not reallytalking about preventing

that much, maybe a little bit. but i have my own theories, okay. so all these projects ishowed you are related, okay. i'm gonna use my notecards, so i don't babble. so they're related not just'cause they're feminist, and they deal with social issues, but because they alloriginate from the same thing we talked about in the beginning, which was this idea of beauty,

this beauty standard that'sbeing imposed on women. and you may think okay,what does beauty have to do with rape or domestic violence? well, this constant bombardment of images in the ads and tv shows,films, video games, etc. is shaping our society, andit's where we're learning from most, especially young kids. so girls and women are beingdepicted in this manner. the message is being sent that's where

our sole value lies in. and it's also telling usthat our purpose in life is to please the male. and that's what we'retelling boys and men as well, that that's the purpose of women and that they're entitled to this. so you can see where this is going, right? so when you watch, and also when you watch tv, movies, video games, whatever,

the protagonists are mostly male. and when you see females, they're what? they're the sex object, the love interest, the sidekick, the one who'sbeing killed or kidnapped. so that, believe it or not, affects us, 'cause we're seeing it constantly. we're being bombarded with this. and it also plays into our everyday life. if you look at ceos, mostly male, right?

you look at our government, mostly male. so what is this telling us? what is this telling the kids? that females are not as important. it's telling us that we're not equal and that we're less than the male. so all of this does add up,and it does affect rape, especially, you know, rapeculture on college campuses. it does affect that, andlike i was talking about

the whole thing, thoseweird italian shows. i mean, there's been an uptickin violence against women, which coincides with these shows. so it affects rape culture. it affects domestic violence,as well as inequality in our workplace and in the government. so what i wanna do is to remind you all that the image is powerful. there's statistics out there that show

that we react stronger toimages than we do to text. so you need to be aware of what you're makingand what you're showing, because i feel like we havea responsibility, okay. so no matter what medium youwork in, your choices matter, and i encourage you thinkabout including women. we are 51% of this population. you would never know that by looking at all those things we talked about,

government, tv, whatever. 51%, we're the majority. so i want you to thinkabout including women in whatever you do, andi want you to be careful about how you portray them as well. and i encourage you to alsonot think oh well, whatever. that's just how it's always been. no, no, we got to move beyond that. we got to question the status quo.

we got to get people tothink a little bit more beyond just like oh, that'show it's always been, because that's how change happens and change for the good,change for the better. so that's what i'm tryingto do with my works, and i have a lot more to do. - [tom] we have a coupleminutes for questions. we have a microphone for youto use when you ask a question. it doesn't amplify your voice.

it's just for the video. any questions? - [voiceover] so i thankyou for your presentation. it was really great. i noticed on, like, withinternet and the social media, there's a lot of women takingcontrol of their image, and so we have a lot of images by us that are out there. but then, there's also, like,a lot of objectification

that's put out there thatyou can see all the time. and so i'm just wondering whatyour thoughts are on that. - on what? - [voiceover] on, i guess, how social media and appsand all of those things change the, or if it changesthe perception of women. since people are looking,a lot more people, especially the youngergeneration, are looking to those things insteadof just what's being given

to us by larger media corporations. - right. - [voiceover] there's like-- - well, it depends onwho's doing it, right? i mean, but when i see, like, pictures that girls are puttingup, it's still very, like, they're objectifying themselves. i mean, it's incredible howmany times you'll, like, be walking down the street,and there'll be some girl

like you know, preppingfor her selfie, you know, doing the duck lip thing, you know. i mean, that does, that'sthe same thing, right, so regardless of whether it'ssome big corporate whatever, or we're doing it to ourselves. i think that's part of theissue is that we're not even aware that we're doingit to ourselves, right? is that what you're talking about? - [voiceover] yeah, i guess, that's what

i was talking about, just'cause i think about it. i do think about that alot, how there's a lot of really powerful images but also a lot of objectification and howit's like this weird space. like, you can see both of it. and i'm just wondering if that changes people's perceptions, orhow, you know, i don't know. but yeah, your answer, itgot my question answered. - it depends on what imagesthey're putting up, too,

'cause remember, i mean,a lot of the images females are in or even doing themselves is for the male gaze, andas long as it's still for the male gaze, we'renot changing anything. - [voiceover] mm-hmm. - you know? - [voiceover] thank you, cat, for coming. i'm trying to figure out away to ask this question, but i was looking at this--

- oh oh! - no, no, it's not a, just let me. i'm about to figure it out. well, there's this newcampaign is like sugar babies where women, after college,they try to find sugar from all the sugar daddies. - that's funny that you say that. that's one of my next posters. - [voiceover] and i was just about to ask.

- be your own sugar daddy. - [voiceover] that's hilarious. - that's the tag. - [voiceover] but i wasabout to say if there was, i was about to ask you if there's any way you would possibly protest that, and like, basically, you were actually having the balloons and the lips. - oh, absolutely.

- [voiceover] would youever like raid that, like, and protest that in any type of way. - hell yeah! - [voiceover] okay, dope. - are you kidding? of course, that was, i swear to god. that was my next postercampaign that i want to do. be your own sugar daddy. absolutely, is that whatwe're talking about?

right? - [voiceover] yes, definitely. - yeah, there's somethinggoing on about that. - [voiceover] oh no, i'm sayingit needs to be protested. it's stupid. - no, i mean, like, that's a movement? - [voiceover] yes, like,literally, it's a convention where women actually are taught on how to catch sugar daddies.

(groans) and most people, yeah, it'sliterally a whole movement. it's an expo where women come. and it's funny, because mostpeople were sitting there talking about oh, mostof these girls are dumb. then when they have the caption, it was like yale university and harvard. - oh, that's horrible. - [voiceover] so a lot of these girls

are actually coming fromtop ivy league schools, and they think it's aneducational factor, but it's not. it's a financial factor and i think it's definitely a self-esteem factor. and i was just thinkingif there's a possible way, you would possibly protest that. - absolutely, want to join me? - [voiceover] i actually would. i think it's stupid.

- we'll talk later. it's so stupid. - [voiceover] cat, i didhave one question about miami art basel. - huh? - [voiceover] the projectyou did at miami art basel that where i would expect a lot of wealthier people there who have had a lot of plastic surgery,

did anyone come in who fit that? - not that i could tell. - [voiceover] no. - yeah, it was surprising. - [voiceover] right, yeah, so it was-- - i was wondering how i would handle that. - [voiceover] exactly, that situation. - yeah, i was a little worried about that, but i didn't have anybody.

it was surprising. - [voiceover] okay. - [tom] any other questions? - i think if i did havesomebody, i would focus on their inner beauty. - [voiceover] absolutely. - i would completely avoid the - [voiceover] avoid the topic, right. - [tom] so we have tothank you so much for

the voice you're tryingto bring to these issues for women in general, but for society in general,and it's fantastic. and the humor you bringto it is really inspiring. it's really fantastic. - of course, thank you. - [tom] thank you so much.