Wing Young Huie, 2012
(http://www.wingyounghuie.com/eat)
This photo is part of Wing Young Huie's Eat album of photography. Eat is supposed to trace the relationship between food and identity and it includes 30 pieces of new work alongside images from more well-known photographs and others that have never before been published.
In the "little picture" we see children eating food, off of disposable plates, and drinking, out of a carton, at a table, maybe at school. In the "big picture" we see that this may be a representation of how this specific culture approaches food, and more specifically how children approach food in this culture. I refer to it as a culture, which is just an assumption, because the children are wearing the same types of clothes and the boys all have the same hair style--making it a very homogenous culture. Something to also notice about this picture is that even though the children know this photo is being taken, because several of them are looking at the camera, none of them are smiling which could also be attributed to their culture and their values.
Wing Young Huie and Margaret Atwood both present the concept of "othering" in each of their works through clothing and what it symbolizes. Sexes in both works are viewed/treated differently through symbols in the way they dress. In Huie's work the girls are dressed more conservatively, with a head covering, and the boys are all wearing collared t-shirts. This affects the way they are treated/viewed because their clothing most likely means something about their role in society. In Atwood's work (The Handmaid's Tale) the women dress more conservatively, with head coverings and long dresses, and the men all wear regular clothes (suits, uniforms, etc.). This affects the way they are treated/viewed because their clothing means something about their role in society and this is evident throughout the novel. The sexes in both Huie and Atwoods' works are dressed differently, to symbolize their gender and their roles, which directly affects the way they are treated and/or viewed by others, which is the concept of "othering". The only difference is that in The Handmaid's Tale it is easily seen how clothing affects the treatment of the sexes in society, but in Huie's work/photo it can only be inferred that clothing affects the treatment of the sexes in society because it is completely out of context and their is no evidence to support that conclusion.
I liked how you compared the clothing in The Handmaid's Tale to the picture. The Handmaids had even more conservative clothing than the children in the photograph because the women weren't even aloud to look at each other's faces, but Ofglen and the girls in the picture might be able to relate if they both do not like the coverings. I would also like to add that the children probably do not have many strong feelings about the clothing because they began their life wearing these, but Ofglen had to modify her lifestyle right in the middle of her life. Atwood and Huie could also be compared because the coverings may be due to religion in the photograph Huie captured, and the government of Gilead, depicted by Atwood, tried to base all their rules off of the Bible when trying to create reasons for the people's hardships.
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