These images brings to light the societal pressures women have to apply make-up, and thus, creating a "toxic face". The bottom image is indicative of the toxins that people put into their bodies everyday through what they eat. These images show how miniscule exposures to toxins contribute to "total body burden" of toxins.
These images are very much geared towards women and the exposures they are pressured into on a daily basis. Whether through arts and crafts, coooking, or make-up, women's bodies are a vessel for toxic chemicals.
This image combines a variety of material artifacts geared towards women to show us the ways in which women are exposed to toxicity. In doing so, it also uncovers the hegemonic discourses that hide toxicity in the products women use on a daily basis.
The toxic women. I believe this image conveys how women's bodies are fashioned as a canvas board for companies to market toxic items to as a form of beauty and health.
This is collage portrait of various artifacts geared towards women.
My eyes moved from the top down, eventually focusing on the bottom two images. It was a little more difficult to discern the purpose of the last two images, and thus, I spent more time on them.
The collage of photo and cartoon brought to my attention the question of labeling parts on an image. In the right-hand cartoon, parts of the city are clearly labeled, e.g. the school. In the left-hand photograph, viewers are left with figuring out details of the image. Even though the cartoon is exaggerated, the collage produces an interesting comparison. One is called to imagine the social structures covered in the debris of the collapsed Rana Plaza Building.
This montage of a caricature with 'real' footage reminds me of Benjamin's concept of the phantasmagoria. The caricature speaks to the dream space of "unlimited" capitalism that promises to provide goods and wealth to each and everyone.
One of the many powerful dimensions of this image is portraying the presence of toxicity in everyday products. Fashion could point to many different kinds of clothing, but I think the choice of the T-Shirt is purposeful. Like the mass media addressed in the title chosen for the image, the T-Shirt is aimed at a mass audience. While the presented item is a "regular" or "unisex" version, the pink color in the background could indeed communicate a more feminized dimension of fashion production.
In addition to addressing the toxicity of a mass-produced object like the T-Shirt, the image makes a claim about toxicity in on the scale of the domestic as well as personal space. The interpellation of the individual reader is quite clear in the sub-headline. Here, the clothing closet is invoked as an intimate but also opaque space, where toxicity is not expected to be found.
