Although I am personally very interested in the future of AI and the big data, my skills and abilities are limited, so I have switched my topic to female self-awareness, which is also of great interest to me personally.
What：
Female self-awareness
How can we help women raise their self-awareness？
Why:
When in an unfamiliar environment, people subconsciously disguise themselves or develop a so-called “persona.” My idea comes from the fact that when I first entered university, I joined a new environment. There were many new voices around me, which gradually blurred my perception of ‘self, and I began to wrap up my ‘self’ and present myself as what I thought the ‘voices around me’ wanted me to be. I began to wrap my ‘self’ around me and present myself as I thought the ‘voices around me’ wanted me to present myself. But when I stepped out of this environment, I suddenly became acutely aware that this was not the way I liked to be. It’s not easy to face our true selves, which means looking at ourselves, admitting our flaws, and acknowledging things that we can’t change.
How
As the first part of the body that humans look at when distinguishing individuals in society, the face is like a monitor for the narrative of identity. In some people’s minds, there is a gap between the ‘body’ they are born with and the ‘self’ they perceive inside so that they may give themselves a ‘reborn’ body through various external means – ‘body modification.
The mask is now not just a tool to conceal one’s identity; it is increasingly being used as the most intuitive form of expression – a way to actively recreate a face and construct one’s narrative to oppose the settings and interpretations of others.
I will be using masks as my intervention tool. My stakeholders are women with a weak sense of self. They are Chinese women living in China, the US, and the UK; they have different professions. They are teachers, photographers, lawyers, etc. However, they have in common that they have body shame, appearance anxiety, and some other different issues about self-consciousness. I contacted them via email and social media, asked them for their thoughts and opinions, and invited them to join me in this intervention. I will collect their work through pictures and interview the participants, which I hope to use to help them open up their inner selves and discover who they are.
During the intervention, I will give each of them a natural blank mask if I can or use a drawing tool such as an iPad to do so. I hope that they will draw their faces, maybe in different colors, maybe in various forms, but just their inner selves.
Timetable
4.26-5.2 Discuss with stakeholders，experts and Questionnaire.
5.3-5.9 intervention and Interview
What if
Everyone struggles with different things, and there is no fixed level of self-acceptance for each individual. Sometimes people may have misconceptions about self-acceptance, such as self-acceptance being a passive acceptance or tolerance of one’s shortcomings when self-acceptance sees and acknowledges all of one’s qualities without judgment. Or people may think that self-acceptance means indulging oneself or trying to get ahead, but self-acceptance is not a behavior. It is just a state of mind. My project hopes to help more women realize the importance of self-awareness and re-examine self-awareness and behavior.
Self Awareness – Who Am I?
Introduction
We usually identify our existence with our position in society, our friends and family, the needs and desires of our body, and the emotional and intellectual expressions of our mind. For example: We might say ‘I am a student studying economics, I have three sisters and live in London’. We rarely take the time to contemplate the real nature of our existence; to ask the question, “Who am I?”
Self awareness is about learning to better understand why you feel what you feel and why you behave in a particular way. Once you begin to understand this concept you then have the opportunity and freedom to change things about yourself enabling you to create a life that you want. It’s almost impossible to change and become self-accepting if you are unsure as to who you are. Having clarity about who you are and what you want can be empowering, giving you the confidence to make changes.
Try this challenge
Think about describing yourself to another person without mentioning anything about the external things that are in your life, your friends, family, studying etc. Concentrate only on yourself, how you feel and behave, perhaps recognising some of your strengths and weaknesses.
Did you manage to explore your thoughts, feelings and behaviours?
It’s easy to get caught up in irrational thoughts and beliefs and live out internal dramas that can severely affect the way we perceive ourselves and consequently determine our feelings and actions. Relationships are easy until there is emotional turmoil. This is the same whether you are at work or in your personal life. When you can change the interpretation in your mind of what you think, you can change your emotions and shift the emotional quality of your relationships. When you can change the emotions in your relationships you open up entirely new possibilities in your life.
Having a clear understanding of your thought and behaviour patterns helps you understand other people. This ability to empathise facilitates better personal and professional relationships.
Is self-awareness important?
Self awareness is important because when we have a better understanding of ourselves, we are able to experience ourselves as unique and separate individuals. We are then empowered to make changes and to build on our areas of strength as well as identify areas where we would like to make improvements. Self-awareness is often a first step to goal setting. Self-awareness is being conscious of what you’re good at while acknowledging what you still have yet to learn. This includes admitting when you don’t have the answer and owning up to mistakes.
In our highly competitive culture, this can seem counter-intuitive. In fact, many of us operate on the belief that we must appear as though we know everything all the time or else people will question our abilities, and then perhaps judge us. If you’re honest with yourself, you’ll admit that really the opposite is true. Because whether you acknowledge your weaknesses or not, everyone still sees them. So rather than conceal them, the person who tries to hide weaknesses actually highlights them, creating the perception of a lack of integrity and self-awareness.
The Johari Window
The Johari Window can be looked at from many angles and provides four basic forms of the Self (the Known, Hidden, Blind, and Unknown Self).
The Known Self is what you and others see in you. This is the part that you are able to discuss freely with others. Most of the time you agree with this view you have and others have of you.
The Hidden Self is what you see in yourself but others don’t. In this part you hide things that are very private about yourself. You do not want this information to be disclosed for the reason of protection. It could also be that you may be ashamed of these areas and feel a vulnerability to having your faults and weaknesses exposed. This area equally applies to your good qualities that you don’t want to advertise to the world due to modesty.
The Blind Self is what you don’t see in yourself but others see in you. You might see yourself as an open-minded person when, in reality, people around you don’t agree. This area also works the other way. You might see yourself as a “dumb” person while others might consider you incredibly bright. Sometimes those around you might not tell you what they see because they fear offending you. It is in this area that people sometimes detect that what you say and what you do don’t match and sometimes body-language shows this mismatch.
The Unknown Self is the self that you cannot see, others can’t see it either. In this category there might be good and bad things that are out of the awareness of others and you. This might refer to untapped potential talents and skills that have yet to be explored by you, your friends, colleagues or managers.
Body Shame
In our society, it’s difficult to love your body without effort, and it can take many years of work to get there. There are many challenges to face before one feels compassion, acceptance, and ultimately love for their body.
Pictures, articles, videos, blogs, and vlogs constantly feed us messages about how we should look. How many times a day do you see an article telling you how you can get a, “bikini body,” as if putting a bikini on your body doesn’t qualify as a bikini body? These kinds of messages can seem so normal that we don’t realize the message we’re receiving and telling ourselves is that our bodies aren’t good enough as they are.
There is a societal body-shaming that is so ingrained that it can feel like the truth. But it’s not the truth. You don’t have to change your body to be deserving of showing it off however you’d like—bikini, tankini, one-piece, and perhaps even just your birthday suit (where permitted, of course).
In addition to the societal challenges we face, your family history may be another barrier to overcome. Our values and beliefs are passed down through generations. Many kids were told directly to change their appearance, because they were too fat, too thin, or otherwise not right. In other families, parents were careful not to criticize their child’s body, but they criticized their own bodies and modeled behaviors like constant dieting, which sent the message that their body type wasn’t good enough. This is an example of a covert message, because even if the parent never explicitly told you what the “right” body should look like, you still internalized the message that their body wasn’t good enough as it was.
Those who were teased and bullied as children suffered wounds from peers that can bleed for a lifetime unless tended to. As children, the need to be accepted and for a sense of safety among peers is important. When a child feels ostracized for their appearance, the belief that they are not OK, good enough, or worthy of love begins to get cemented. The outcome may be a lifetime focused on changing their body, but the feeling of worthlessness is much deeper than that.
When it comes to dating and mating in this complex world, one’s body shame can greatly impact their experience. It contributes to low self-esteem, which impacts who you choose, how you expect to be treated, what kinds of boundaries you have, and how you treat others. Also, it impacts your ability to be vulnerable, intimate, and to experience pleasure. Body shame, and not body weight, can be a barrier to love and connection.
Changing your body might seem like the answer. If only you could be thinner, leaner, stronger, or bigger, you’d feel great. Perhaps you would, in some ways. I like to call these our “if only’s,” which are the false beliefs that if only we could reach some (often unattainable) goal, everything would change.
Unfortunately, even when one does reach their “if only,” they find that it wasn’t the answer to all of their pain and problems. More often than not, healing these painful wounds takes a different kind of change. Usually, healing body shame takes changing internally, not externally.
So I wanted to use body reshaping as a way of exploring female self-awareness
Research
Intervention-Mask