Addicted
Document Type
Graphic Novel
Publication Date
Fall 2024
Abstract
These comics were created by students in Dr. Stella Oh's WGST 3300: Race, Gender, and Graphic Novels exploring thematic topics of identity, loss, illness, disability, and caregiving. After reading creative and scholarly works addressing war, PTSD, social stigma, and graphic medicine, students engaged in creating several comics. Some of the student comics are featured in this collection. Communicating their ideas through the visual-textual medium of comics, students engaged in critical reflection of their readings and class discussions. Students produced their comics through software such as Illustrator, Canva, Procreate, and other media.
Repository Citation
Gaylord, Katherine and Oh, Stella, "Addicted" (2024). Women’s and Gender Studies Student Work. 3.
https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/wgst_student/3
Comments
"Addicted" navigates my struggles with eating disorders and the direct impact training as a classical dancer for seventeen years had on my mental health, utilizing the primary symbol of mirrors with unrealistic reflections to visually convey this intimate connection. As a lifelong dancer, I was surrounded by giant, looming mirrors for hours everyday. This constant forced self-reflection was only made worse by the unforgiving rhetoric and diet culture of classical dance and ballet. What had originally been an outlet for my emotions quickly twisted into the cause of my anxiety and compulsion around food, my weight and body, and exercise. Addicted explores the idea of unreliable mirrors to depict my journey of falling in love– or perhaps becoming infatuated– with the aesthetics of dance and the beauty of the human body, and spiraling into a dangerous obsession with my body. The captions seem to describe a woman’s love of, and struggles in, dance; however, the images depict a dark spiral of restrictive eating, over exercising, and body dysmorphia.