Marianne Wex"Let's take back our space" : Female and Male Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures

Marianne Wex bases her work on the assumption that body language is a result of sex-based, patriarchal socialization, affecting all of our other "feminine" and "masculine" role behavior. The work is based on 5000 to 6000 photographs of body postures, taken between 1974 and 1977. Examples from the media (advertisements, films, news reports) are also used to complete the picture. In the historical section, Marianne Wex investigates the body language shown in sculptures of the last 3000 to 4000 years, and comes to the conclusion that the ideals of body language and body forms have never been so different between the sexes as they are today.