Masculinity?

Being gay and born into a stereotypical family can be a difficult experience that can impact your life fundamentally. After my dad was taken away by oesophagal cancer at the end of 2019, the male figure's sudden loss in a family left my mum and me at a complete loss of what to do. The one and only man, head of a family, a breadwinner, a man so distant but so depended upon, a man I supposed to have come in the future, a man I called farther, now gone with his unfulfilled promises. There is no doubt that the patriarchal male figure is central to the traditional family system's problem. Thus, I began to rethink a father's definition as a powerful male, the masculinity he represents, the patriarchal society we live in, and as a gay man, how this male stereotype has affected my growth and blocked me from becoming who I really am. Facing difficulties in this straight society we live in, toxic behaviour still threatens us from time to time. My artefacts are designed to be functional products, well fabricated. By making "weapons" fun and thought-provoking, I use phallic metaphors as a symbolic language to create irony on the admiration of toxic-masculinity in male stereotyping. The world has gone through this pandemic has made me believe that making the world a better place requires us to show more empathy and love; to me, that is also what fashion is supposed to bring out from us.