Barbie Ascot Hat

Credit: The Daily Mail Online

I attended Ladies Day at Ascot and decided to create my own hat for the occasion.  The creation featured three of my zombified Barbies from my 'corruption of childhood innocence' project alongside seven headless, unclothed Barbie dolls attached to a plain black base with red ribbon.  The zombified Barbies wore smaller toy horses in their hair to act as fascinators, to go with the theme of Ascot.

Barbies are often viewed as an unrealistic ideal of the socially constructed standards of beauty for women.  Women at Ladies Day are expected to present themselves very properly to meet these standards of beauty.  My intention of wearing this hat at Ladies Day was to subvert the expectations of women's beauty.  The dolls represent a sense of corrupted childhood innocence as children grow up with these dolls and these ideas of what beauty is and as they grow older they realise how impossible these standards are to meet.  The bloodied dolls represent the lengths some women will go to to make themselves beautiful.

There are strict rules for clothing at Ladies Day and unfortunately my hat did not meet their criteria due to it 'promoting a brand', being 'gimmicky' and 'inappropriate' due to the nude and disfigured dolls.  This meant I was not allowed to wear the hat inside the gates of the event, which was very disappointing.  However several photographs approached me outside the gates and asked for photos of the hat, meaning it was features in several online news articles.

The Daily Mail

The Sun

Online Nigeria

The World Times

Iltalehti (Finnish)

Spray Painted Barbies

Black Barbies, Chaz Howkins, 2015, spray painted Barbie dolls

I spray painted three dolls completely matt black as I wanted to erase their facial features to make them appear sinister as the viewer is left lost and longing for explanation.  I found that darkening the dolls highlighted their disproportionate body shapes as, when displayed against a white background, their waistline is extremely exaggerated, drawing attention to how frail and unhealthy these body images are.

Photography workshop

Documenting my studio space

I hung a line of string above my studio space from which around 20 Barbie dolls hang by their necks (or feet, as some are decapitated).  I photographed them using a slow shutter speed to capture their movement and create a ghost-like effect.