Ultimate Burger Fantasy: Licky Licky

Borne out of middle-class suburbia and the predictable experiences of young adult life, my animations and sculpture are about the average Jane. Ordinary or monotonous events set the stage for comfortable narratives. With the viewer seduced and entertained, the scenes begin to change, as grotesque and disgusting possibilities unfold. Ultimate Burger Fantasy is a rotoscope study of Carl's Junior advertisements that aired on television throughout the 2000s to present day. I combine the images of women and food visually to create a single entity, exploring the complex correlation between extreme consumerism and over-sexualization of the female body in media. I play on the irony of the glamor of beautiful women juxtaposed with meat sandwiches in the advertisements. I do so by constructing a space for the consumption of sexual images and greasy burgers, which takes the shape of a disgusting bedroom hovel. The room is dark, the only light comes from the television and the distorted shapes of the animated food-women dancing across the soiled bed. These vignettes are based on my own experiences with food service. As a waitress at a drive-in I found myself feeling trapped in a relationship of servitude to my customers. It was necessary to appear welcoming and physically attractive to the male gaze. The nauseating mixture of sex appeal and comfort food stayed with me, a repetitive, never-ending experience of becoming objectified in order to make a living. The use of the sexualized body to manipulate desire is everywhere and as unrelenting as the greasy underbelly of our society.