Lad vs. Slag
Part of Final Year Project - 2019
This project is about the difference in men and women; how a man can sleep with many women and receive praise but a woman doing the same thing gets criticised and called derogatory terms like “slag”.
Using letterpress to produce a range of A2 prints. They were then photographed with male and female models to show the difference. The publication summarises all this work and gives further information on the names used.
Looking at how men and women are treated differently. For example, how couples often have more “serious” questions like money directed at the male in the relationship. Similarly when it comes to sex, women are treated very differently.
If a man is sexually active with many women, it’s not a big deal and he often gets praised. However, women get a stigma for doing the same thing. The terms used to describe men and women are very different - men are lads, women are slags.
Using letterpress I printed a range of words that are used to negatively describe a woman who has had sex. Such as, slag, slut, whore and hoe. These A2 are bold with the aim to be hard hitting. I experimented with the letterpress process by looking at layering several names on top of each other to demonstrate the vast amount of words and the heaviness of it all.
Putting the prints in action was done to make the words visualised with the gender they “apply” to. The inspiration came from Gillian Wearing’s work as the prints are held in front of the models in the same style. The various different names women get called to describe their sexual activity are held by a female model whereas the male model consistently holds the word “lad”.
By visualising two people of the opposite sex holding derogatory terms associated to their gender it demonstrates how gender shouldn’t decide the labels given with regards to sex. It also shows how there are many negative names for women but none for men.
The publication compiles the information and letterpress prints used within this project. The purpose of it is to be bold and upfront about the issues with these terms used to describe women. It has statements like “some people get a status for having sex, women get a stigma” to get the message across in a direct way.
The publication is titled ‘men are lads, women are slags’ it is slightly bigger than A5 and is printed onto thick stock. Whilst short, it offers a hard hitting message that could be understood and absorbed within a few minutes of reading.
