Faces of feminism : an ideographic analysis of "stop telling women to smile"

Abstract

Artist and activist Tatyana Fazlalizadeh's "Stop Telling Women to Smile" street art campaign features wheat pasted posters depicting non-smiling women above phrases that refute gender-based street harassment. The campaign has spread throughout urban America and into Mexico as a response to, and with the support of, the online feminist community's call to end gender-based street harassment. This paper analyzes the "Stop Telling Women to Smile" campaign using an ideographic analysis, and draws critical implications regarding the lack of a smile as an ideograph and the ideograph as localized and modified for the feminist community.