Pagdadalaga: Exploring the feminist identity A Photo essay on identity development during adolescence in relation to local representations of women

• Main Author: Sombilon, Julie Anne S.
• Format: text
• Language: Filipino
• Published: Animo Repository 2013
• Subjects: Communication
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/2629
• Institution: De La Salle University

Pagdadalaga: Exploring the Feminist Identity is an essay of interpretive photographs exploring the identity of a Filipina developed through the stage of adolescence. Terry Barrett defines interpretive photographs as pictures that ... offer information about the world, explaining phenomena, but from a personal, idiosyncratic, and non-scientific point of view. As the subject is often directed, and is presented in a highly symbolic way, the acceptance of their truth is based on the viewer's willingness to believe them. (Barrett p. 42 1986) The project is intrinsically limited to personal experiences dealt with by the author which reflect elements that contribute to identity formation, such as race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender and feminism. Guided by Downing and Roush's Feminisit Identity Model which summmarizes the relationship between the woman and the self in the formation of her identity, and Erik Erikson's stages of identity development, it follows a cycle of maturation -- beginning from a certain awakening and questioning, leading to a woman's understanding of who she is and what she is. The images show contrasting ideologies from some local portrayals of women, which according to Peracullo (Dalumat E-journal 2010, vol. 1 o. 61), are buried and hidden in the collective Filipino psyche and once in a while, summoned to put a women in her place, and to remind her where she should be in the scheme of things. Conclusion of the study suggests that modern Filipino women have emerged from these representations, and have become women who confront new challenges present int the modernized milieu.