Piss Beauty

Piss (on) "Beauty", originally uploaded by Qathi.

Further commentary on the commodification of beauty as a cultural standard, the distortion of the human figure as it is marketed to girls, consequently boys. As adult women chose to distort themselves to more closely resemble unreal, manufactured ideals of beauty, and thusly distorting and falsifying the female image to males creating unrealistic expectations of the female form. Further perpetuated by the porn star image, the movie star image, the pop star image. Girls are not the only target of the distorted beauty image. It's possible that the unreal influences real hopes and desires thereby setting up our sexual partners for disappointment, unfulfilled desires and a lack of satisfaction due to reality not matching the constructed image of woman one has grown up with (The Price of Pleasure, Chyng Sun, 2010). This is entirely debatable, lets talk about it.

Our culture begins to train our young to objectify the female form early and often with seemingly innocent dolls. These very dolls are the seeds which grow into body conscious young people who hyper-focus on looks rather than content. Many of us would like to believe and may state, 'oh no that doesn't apply to me', but I'd wager to guess if we really poked at the subject, it's wiggling around in your brain somehow, someway. We, as advanced conscience beings have to fight against this American/Western beauty image and actually work to not let it infect us.  Perhaps some of us/you have won the battle. YAY! Lets talk about how so that we can perpetuate successful body image / expectation tactics within our culture.

From my project proposal

I will appropriate the idea of Sarrano’s Piss Christ, to make a piece with similar formal structure, a photo of a cultural icon of consumerism, and American beauty standards suspended in urine and photographed then edited for similar presentation as the original piece. Thereby ‘pissing’ on present trends towards agelessness and plasticized sameness as dictated by current media projections of beauty.

As a piece on appropriation, the context of this work is to understanding the idea of appropriation, understanding the piece being appropriated and transforming that grok into a work of my own that expresses my own feelings on the present cultural beguile of beauty and the idea that one can with the appropriate resources purchase beauty and perhaps some perception of privilege. Which in a way has replaced an older cultural understanding of Christianity and the practice of repenting and buying alms, that one could buy their respect, buy their forgiveness and buy their reputation with the church, making them look good in the eyes of those who were culturally important at the time. Beauty and consumerism has become a bit of it’s own religion.

 I was asked who my intended audience was - I'd say people who are familiar with Sarrano's work, but also any budding young woman, budding young man, women who are becoming aware of the freakish distortion of female form who need a like minded opinion to boost their good fight against the pressure to look like a doll.  We can't look like dolls.

• This image is a photo
• it is a photo of a distorted female form
• it is an image of discarded objects of commercially standardized beauty 
• it is two thriftstore dolls forced to fit together to create a further distorted image
• suspended in "piss"
• the form is in a crucified position to further cary the idea of beauty as religion

Feel free to repost or link this. My other posts about this topic have seen a decent number of views. I think this is an important discussion to open and share.

I'd like to add, that I acknowledge tall blond beautiful people exist in nature. I'm not in anyway trying to state that people who fit the description of Barbie are entirely fictitious, special but not impossible.  My own family is a very good example of this. However the beauty standard ideal as perpetuated by consumerism effects my family as well. I'm the shorty at 5'7" as well I'm the black sheep in that I'm not light blond but "dishwater" blond and, at a round (american) size 10 and, 160 pounds I'm nearly obese.  The pressure from my own family to be thinner and blonder is not lost on me. One could state that I could be classically beautiful if I didn't fuck up my looks with tattoos, piercings and kooky hair.  I made these permanent choices at a very young age to challenge beauty standards, to force the people I interact with to see my offerings to the social sphere, rather than my "pretty". I don't really mind being pretty (kinda), however; to me being "pretty" causes women to be objectified in a way that I'm not entirely comfortable with as a result I began my journey to fight against beauty standards. It's been a long walk.