Noémie Ninot Asks Men on Dating Apps to Describe Their Ideal Woman, Then Turns Answers into Latex Masks
Noémie Ninot gathered 300 responses from heterosexual cisgender men using dating apps such as Hinge, Tinder, and Bumble regarding their perceptions of an ideal woman's physical traits. She sorted these responses and crafted 30 portraits with latex masks to represent these ideals. Ninot contends that these masks embody a normative standard, challenging the concept of male desire and the 'ideal woman' within Western visual culture. The series underscores the fatigue of perpetually modifying one's identity on dating platforms, where profiles function as consumer products. Ninot posits that identity is a construct, prompting inquiries into authenticity and self-image, as women absorb a critical gaze that influences their freedom to think and act.
Key facts
- Noémie Ninot surveyed heterosexual cis men on dating apps and websites including Hinge, Tinder and Bumble about their ideal image of a woman, especially physical appearance.
- She collected 300 responses, categorized them in an Excel table and based 30 portraits on that categorization.
- The fantasies are embodied through latex masks, which Ninot describes as carriers of a normative, often stereotypical ideal that can literally be put on.
- The series interrogates the construction of male desire, the collective idea of the 'ideal woman' and Western visual culture.
- Ninot states that the question of authenticity has become obsolete because everything is influenced by the social gaze and desire is always already constructed.
- She describes a double internalized gaze and continuous self-surveillance that begins early in women's lives and turns thinking inward.
- Dating apps, she argues, reduce identity to a single coherent profile that functions as an immediate consumer tool and leaves no room for complexity.
- In the portraits the mask increasingly becomes artificial and finally disintegrates, with artificial eyelashes falling out and hair changing across many colors and styles.
Entities
Artists
- Noémie Ninot
Institutions
- Hinge
- Tinder
- Bumble
- Monopol