Ιn our everyday life, we’re faced with thousands of images.
They stare at us from billboards, magazine covers, TV commercials, product packaging, movie posters, and celebrities’ social media accounts. Many of these images contain messages that only reach us on an unconscious level.

They can be messages about gender: how we’re supposed to be, dress and act in order to be seen as normal, attractive, and ‘real’ men and women. But also messages about other norms: what a normal family, body, or skin color looks like – or the expected boss, preschool teacher, prime minister, or office cleaner, for that matter.

Images show us what’s possible. After all, you can’t be what you can’t see. Images can exclude people, by never showing some groups at all, or only portraying them as deviations from the norm. Images can cement narrow gender roles that limit all of
us – girls and boys, men and women, and those who don’t identify with any of these categories, but images can also do the opposite.

When done right, images can include and mirror all people, not just those who fit into the norm in society. And images can tickle our imagination When it comes to what we can do with our lives, and who we can become.

We are not set in stone.