{"id":794,"date":"2019-09-05T21:52:14","date_gmt":"2019-09-05T21:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/?p=794"},"modified":"2019-09-23T05:06:42","modified_gmt":"2019-09-23T05:06:42","slug":"the-old-bags-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/2019\/09\/05\/the-old-bags-project\/","title":{"rendered":"The Old Bags Project"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

by Joan Anderman, Boston Globe<\/em>, 24 May 2016 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/search-proquest-com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu\/docview\/1790817896?accountid=9783<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Baum and Petcher’s photo series shows middle aged female volunteers photographed with bags from trendy retailers placed over their heads.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Old Bags Project, Faith Baum’s and Lori Petchers’ multidisciplinary exploration of middle-age American womanhood, has been exhibited in galleries across the Northeast, projected onto buildings, fashioned into video installations, published as a book. Baum and Petchers put out a sign-up sheet to recruit women interested in posing for the project. So far 60 have participated: large women and small, dark and light, sturdy, saggy, lithe, wrinkled, meek, muscled, graceful, tattooed, in hot pink satin and baggy beige briefs, each one wearing a shopping bag on her head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The shopping bags work on many levels; neutralizing an age-old insult, poking fun at consumerism, preventing viewers from shifting their gaze to a woman’s face as a refuge from the taboo sight of a middle-age woman’s body. For the vast majority of the women, obscuring their faces freed them to expose their bodies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lots of things about aging are scary: sickness, running out of money, being alone. But our changing bodies shouldn’t be this awful thing that we work so hard to pretend we’re stopping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Old Bags Project wants to shine a light on the debasing effects of ageism, yes, but also on the insidiousness of it; the hard truth that even thoughtful and enlightened people feel compelled to play by its twisted rules. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal of the Old Bags Project is to reveal the biases we have towards older women and older bodies. I have found that even preschoolers have fears and biases towards older adults; they might find things like wrinkles or walkers to be scary. This art project is an example of a way to challenge these biases. While it isn’t necessarily appropriate for preschoolers, the importance of normalizing aging is relevant to my project.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Joan Anderman, Boston Globe, 24 May 2016 https:\/\/search-proquest-com.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu\/docview\/1790817896?accountid=9783 The Old Bags Project, Faith Baum’s and Lori Petchers’ multidisciplinary exploration of middle-age American womanhood, has been exhibited in galleries across the Northeast, projected onto buildings, fashioned into video installations, published as a book. Baum and Petchers put out a sign-up sheet to recruit women interested […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":2775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,30],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-794","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts","8":"category-arts-featured"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2577,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions\/2577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desis.osu.edu\/seniorthesis\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}