My lyrical essay, entitled “Girls Should,” focuses on the topic of sexism. It represents the judgment and stereotypes of women by describing the two conversations between my interviewee and her aunt about girls should have long hair, so I chose the quotation of “How could a girl be beautiful without long hair?”`
The only character in the photo I chose is a woman located in the lower right corner. Her hands hold a photo, and she is looking away as she just looks up from the phone. It looks like she has been waiting for someone or something for a long time because she is sitting and looks tired. I want to use this characteristic to reveal that people are frustrated after waiting a long time for a society without any judgment and inequality. The woman’s feet and the walk side are concealed by grass implies the undirected future. Behind her is a blossom tree, the trunk is blocked by the woman’s body, and the branches radiate from her head. I talked about roots underground in my lyrical essay, they were the symbols of the judgment, both in the past and present, that was difficult to change, that stuck in some people’s minds. To compare with the negative roots, the blossom tree in the photo symbolizes the hope of a bright future.
I used Adobe Photoshop to edit my photo. To make the picture black and white, I first made a layer of black and white, then created a gradient map from black to gray and switch the effect to overlay. After that, I used a brush to highlight the woman. In the end, I created a layer of solid black and switched the effect to lighten. I used the quick select tool to cut off the woman from the picture, and I then filled it with black. I chose the font of SignPainter because this font that each character connects to the next one is similar to the texture of hair. To place my text, I created text boxes for each word, then placed them on where I want. After that, I converted the text boxes to shape and manipulated them.
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