Exploring surrealism
This piece explores a feminist theme – the role of women in society, especially in the 1960s when the feminist movement first started. The sculpture is given an exaggerated ideal “womanly” figure with a painted on face and with the head cut off to show how women are often looked at as nothing more than pretty objects without brains of their own. The figure is hiding a pencil behind her dress with one hand and holding a huge broom with the other, representing how women’s rights to education and thoughts are often cut off or hidden, and their roles as maids and housewives celebrated. The front of the dress is the colourful title page of a book, whereas the back of the dress is made up by the actual content of the book (a girl’s diary), which can be seen as a symbol of women needing to cover everything that they are behind a colourful pretense of pretty dresses and fake identities.
