When faced with sexism online, most of us just roll our eyes and move on. It’s become so regular that we can’t possibly react to or combat every single comment or article we come across. Sometimes, people do step up and show us why it is important to do so. Susan Bennet, a St. Louis-based freelance photographer and blogger, did exactly that. Confronted by a sexist article, she decided to do something about it instead of just going on to the next article.

The back story:

On Aug. 11, St. Louis Business Journal published an article and gallery highlighting some of St. Louis’ most powerful women. Sounds awesome! However, the one question that was shared on a mass scale to readers was, “What pair of shoes that best describes you and why.” Almost immediately, there was backlash to what the Riverfront Times deemed “Shoegate.” One part of that backlash was Bennet and her counter-shoot.

Well, what’s a counter-shoot?

Good question, Ariel! On her blog, Bennet photographed 39 women in a project named “Undefined.” She was disgusted by the assertion of the St. Louis Business Journal, asking herself, “Who is defined by footwear?” So she sought out women and asked them to participate in her project, in which women got to choose what defined them and be photographed with whatever that was. It wasn’t meant to be a piece of activism; rather, she was “making sense of what’s around [her] in [her] own way.”

Who was in the shoot?

Bennet first reached out to a friend, Kaylen Wissinger, owner of Whisk: a Sustainable Bakeshop, with whom she had worked before on a project. They reached out to their friends, who reached out to their friends, and within 24 hours, they were booked completely solid for the duration of the shoot. She was surprised by the amount of women who reached out to her, all unsure about whether or not she was successful enough or whether she was the type of women Bennet was looking for. It was “eye-opening to see successful women who didn’t perceive themselves that way,” she said. In the end, Bennet recruited a group of women who, according to her, “ran the gamut—there were those who had just gotten out of college, artists in Cherokee area, a 77-year-old [who had been] marrying people for decades.” Bennet expressed that there was no criteria for “success” to be in the shoot. “Women who responded was already very successful because they were socially aware,” she said.

Tell me about the title

Bennet named the project “Undefined.” She came by this title in an interesting way: First, she was thinking about how the original article suggested that shoes could define the women being honored. So, she started looking into what it meant to be defined and then what it meant to be undefined. She found the definition of undefined behavior—the kind that relates to different computer languages—from Wikipedia, which reads, “This happens when the translator of the source code makes certain assumptions, but these assumptions are not satisfied during execution.” She found this very applicable to her project because “making assumptions that are not satisfied” was the foundation of why she started the project in the first place.

What happened after?

Bennet was afraid there would be backlash toward her project from the women who were in the original shoot. She explained how the daughter of one of those women reached out to her in fear that the counter-shoot would somehow paint the women in a negative light. This couldn’t be further from Bennet’s intentions. She emphasized that she knew the women were in no way at fault, even suggesting that the original article was “probably not the stupidest request they ever received.” There was “all solidarity” between Bennet and the original participants.
She also took the project in a new direction, expanding it beyond the photographs. She has been collecting short biographies of the women in the photo shoot and sharing that information on her blog. She’s hoping to highlight four to five women a month and possibly continue taking photographs of women. “Women are very hungry for other women with a similar experience,” she said. “This project hopes to fulfill that need.” After all, a project like this will never run out of amazing women to profile.

Is this her first feminist project?

Like many women nowadays, there has “never been a moment of life without feminist activism” for Bennet. Like many artists, this has played a role in her work beyond the “Undefined” project. “Once you start looking at world through that lens, you can’t stop,” she explained. Thus, all of her work inevitably has a feminist perspective. She gave an example of when she was asked to do a photo essay for Start Bar, an arcade/bar in St. Louis downtown. She took note of how—out of the several posters of famous game designers that decorated the walls—there were no people of color and no women. She included this oversight in her review of the bar, which then took her criticism and turned it into action. Overall, it was a positive experience for her, proving how having a feminist perspective in your work can have an amazing result.

Susan Bennet will be presenting her project Undefined in SOHA Gallery, opening Jan. 6, 2017.

To find out more about Susan Bennet’s past work and upcoming projects, check out her website here.