Start of Project 3 - Back Into It

Right then, an update on the last few weeks:
I've been pretending to be on holiday, while doing alot of thinking about what to do in project three this term. At first I wanted to do something on light BDSM, as it's quite a misunderstood exotic culture to many people, but this proved to be difficult, as the concept behind the work I wanted to do was the female stepping out of the male gaze, and indeed taking on the power formally considered the masculine power, but the ways I could think of to present it would far too easily be mistaken for abuse, domestic and sexual. This is not something I want to portray in any light that is not strictly negative, so I intend on benching that project until I can find a way to portray it without people seeing it as a piece on abuse.
I started to think of how I had done my second project, as an installation rather than one or more pieces of work, and I enjoyed that, creating a set up, a scene, instead of just the one piece of work, and I want to do more of that.
So I started to look at the balance between the masculine and feminine, the male and the female, portrayed through an exotic scene or installation. At first I thought Classical Roman, as it is exotic, but still a part of western history, it is a representation of what we were, and the scene I would set up would be about how we are now - gaining equality, but what we have gained is still fragile in many places. I thought that perhaps a table setting, with the male/masculine place setting, and the female/feminine place setting, the male being strong, and sturdy, physically quite There, and stable. Whereas the female setting would be delicate and fragile, the chair perhaps made out of paper/cardboard, rather than sturdy wood.
This idea developed on to doing two tea settings, a masculine and feminine, but after talking with Kate, one of my tutors, I changed altogether, and started to focus on tea - more specifically, the rituals of tea in Western and Japanese culture, how they are different, and more importantly, the similarities. Though each of these rituals are exotic to each other, they have components that are the same.