Girl - Short Film Poster
Movie Branding and Advertisements
︎ “Girl” is a short story written by Jamaica Kincaid, and I made these as if it was made into a movie adaptation. To give context, the nonlinear plot surrounds a mother writing a letter to her teenage daughter about how to behave as a “proper woman.”
At first glance, it’s a compilation of advice for her daughter in domestic life, but her tone becomes increasingly bitter towards her daughter. It starts small, saying “On Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming.” She gets more overt with this later, saying “This is how to behave in the presence of men who don’t know you very well, and this way they won’t immediately recognize the slut I have warned you against becoming.” She slots that in the middle of her advice on duties she’d be expected to perform for her future husband. Other than that, she gives a list of how to cook, clean clothes, keep her house, and act around men.
We only hear her daughter interject twice, the first time is her arguing that she’d already been following a rule her mother had accused her of breaking. But it was ignored and mixed in with her mom’s lecture. It makes us question the judgment she has of her daughter.
The second time is towards the end, her mother tells her how to see if a loaf of bread is fresh by squeezing it. She asks what she should do if the baker won’t let her touch the bread. Her mother responds, is her daughter, after all that, really going to be the kind of woman the baker won’t let near the bread?
