Monday, May 23, 2011

Tools of Beauty

Self portrait challenge numbero quatro!
When you walk into the bathroom and open your makeup case, do you ever feel like you might as well have just packed a chainsaw and a high powered grinder?! Some days are just like that, but lordy, the things we do in the name of beauty! We tear ourselves apart stitch by stitch, and build ourselves back up with fake lashes and painted lips and fake tans. And really all that muck just covers up the deep seeded insecurity and over critical-ness that no amount of perfection will appease.
When did we stop believing that its what's inside that counts and all that healthy mumbo-jumbo about natural beauty?! When did we buy into all that crap that the only valuable thing about a woman is her looks?!
I lived in South Korea for nearly two years and it was like a step back in time. Women were only as valuable as the amount of makeup they could slather on or the tightest dress they could shimmy into. Women were committing plastic surgery on themselves every time they looked into the mirror. And do you know that's not the scariest part?! The scariest part is that plastic surgery really IS that easy in Sk! Teenagers receive it as a graduation present from their parents, young girls believe it will solve all their life problems. You don't like your beautiful almond, Asian eyes? Cut them open. You hate your beautiful high cheekbones? Shave those babies down to have the skinny Western look. Beauty is a measurable formula, an equation that Korean plastic surgeons have supposedly perfected. It's measurable in the height of your nose, size of your eyes, and skinniness of your body. Got a muscle from, oh say, walking?! Shave it down!
The world becomes a scary place when a woman is just a customizable barbie doll in heels and men hold her strings like a puppet master. A scary scary place.

The self portrait challenge is going full steam ahead, but if you want to see someone who is really stepping up to the plate and taking it to a whole new level, check out Inge Kathleen's work this week! The woman's got mad portrait takin' skillz!

2 comments:

Inge Kathleen said...

I love this. I wonder if you could do a series on self image? It would be a really interesting series.

Mandolyn McConaha said...

hmhmmhmm...I'm braining as we speak...

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