Beauty

Intention

My goal is to analyze the standards of beauty society holds for people today. In order to do so, I decided to take a deeper look on the beauty expectations on women since a woman's body image and how it should and shouldn't be is so highly debated today. I wanted to take lots of images of "beautiful" women online and arrange them in a way that would spark more questions that should be discussed: "Is this what we want women to look like today?" "Is this how women should look like if they want to be desirable?"

This ain't build a bitch workshop! - Vine #6

dopevines - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywqmwSApL3k

Context

I went online and decided to do some research on how people discussed women's body image. I eventually found the video above that I found funny, but also went straight to the heart of this issue. I decided to take her words of women's bodies further by finding those exact features to overwhelm the audience. I didn't want to take things too extreme like pornography, so I decided to find photos that photographers have taken to accentuate women's bodies and features. I also took inspiration from the below photo because I liked the sudden gradient and red color that brought out the issue of what we expect from perfect women.

Process and Product

I went online and found highly regarded photos of what was beautiful or sexy to people from many photographers. Then using photoshop, I made a random collage of them. I made sure to collect a set of eyes at the center, to make the audience feel pressured to respond. However, even just the arrangement didn't quite bring out the effect that I wanted. I wanted a sense of urgency and distortion. I looked online for ways to make images look shattered and I played around with the color gradient until I found something that made the images still clear but intense. Still, there was something missing. I decided to make the question even more pressing by adding the girl in the center and showing the world that's around her.

Critique

I think I've brought out those questions with my work, but still it's not perfect. I wanted to do more with the colors, distortion, and make it less focused on the bodies but more on the emotion and ridiculousness they bring. I think I've reached most of my goal, but I wish I could work on my execution. I'm also not perfect at photoshop, but my perfectionist side still wants to fix the little pieces of the image.

Reflection

I've learned more about my big questions that I expected. I knew that there was a lot of pressure for women to appear in certain ways, but there was also an optimistic side. There was a lot of photos, videos, and people all pushing for society to move forward and not focus on these surface standards. Hopefully, my product today contributed a little for that.

1 comment · Latest by Nazli

I really like this project.
First of all, this is not related to the art you have done, but I just wanted to say that that video was a great entrance. It was short, so doesn't need a long attention span, and it is directly related to your topic.
I like your art a lot. I agree with the addition of the girl in the middle, and I loved how you chose a girl that was facing straight forward. It gave me a feeling like she was looking at me, with the background girls in her mind. I think you were able to convey what you wanted to show.

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MediaSynth #2 - beg-borrow-steal

About

Beg, borrow or steal to make a work of art from which I think I could make money.