For a person to blog well, she needs, of course, to have some writing skills. That’s fairly obvious. She also needs to be observant and receptive. She needs to have her eyes and ears and mind open and be ready to receive once THE IDEA presents itself.
I was reminded of these things this week as I readied myself to write the blog you’re about to read. Let me explain…
Several days ago, on the evening of December twenty-first to be more precise, I attended a “Winter Solstice” party that was organized by John, a colleague at AUC. The social gathering was to be held outside, in a large garden area behind a building that is owned by the university. Before joining the group in the backyard, I needed to drop my backpack off at John’s place, so I climbed two flights of stairs and then saw, much to my delight, that his young son had decorated the door leading into the flat with several paper snowflakes, the sort we’ve all made with a pair of scissors and folded paper. Standing there and looking at all those wonderful creations, the thought suddenly hit me: I could write this week’s blog about snowflakes!
A couple of days later, I discovered SnowCrystals.com, a site put together by Professor Kenneth Libbrecht who does research for the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology. As you’ll see below, a part of what he does at CIT involves the use of all sorts of high-tech gizmos to take pictures of individual snowflakes. He allows embedding of these images, so I’ve given you a sample of what’s available at his site.
Not to be outdone by Mother Nature, Les Barker makes an adult version of what I saw on John’s door the other evening. A thumbnail gallery of some of his work can be found here. Happy viewing!
While getting ready to begin this week’s blog, I thought back to the video I’d included in the previous week’s entry and what I’d written about it.
That clip, if you haven’t seen it, shows a woman’s transformation.
This change begins when she sits down in front of a camera and the makeup artists begin. They apply foundation and rouge and mascara and the lead from colored pencils and who knows what else. They reshape her hair and use computer magic to enlarge her eyes and lips and thin her neck and then soften the outline of her coiffure. In the end, she is beautiful. But it’s a certain type of beauty that rests on the surface of her skin.
It’s pretty clear after watching the change that takes place that she’s not the sort of “real” woman featured in this week’s video. As a matter of fact, this week’s clip serves as a nice counterpoint to last week’s.
This week’s film documents the recent opening of an exhibition of photographs taken by Connecticut-based photographer, Carla Ten Eyck. The theme of the exhibit was female beauty. Ten Eyck asked “real women” to participate by allowing themselves to be photographed. To help the subjects prepare for their individual photo shoots, she got them to think about and then respond, in writing, to the following question: “How do you feel most beautiful?”
The photos serve as the answers to that question.
I don’t want to spoil the video by telling you a lot more than what I just have. Three of the women who were photographed for the exhibition talk about what the experience was like for them. Ten Eyck also discusses her role. All the women are more than capable of speaking for themselves.
I do want to make one comment about something Susannah says. At one point in the video she mentions that she feels empowered when she is “out of her element” and that that is like being “comfortable” because one is discomforted. It’s an interesting idea and something I can really relate to.
As soon as I saw this video, I knew I would have to blog it. The only problem is I just don’t know where to start.
I suppose I could begin by telling you that my students at AUC are writing a paper right now on “beauty,” how the concept is culturally determined, and the hidden (and sometimes not-so-hidden) costs that people, especially women, pay as they attempt to be “beautiful.”
One of the readings I had my students do before they sat down to write was “The Beauty of Symmetry” by Elizabeth Snead.
Snead argues that beautiful people are those whose faces and bodies are most symmetrical and that there is a “golden ratio” that determines perfect symmetry. This theory challenges the old adage that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” If Snead is right, beauty can be objectively and mathematically determined.
Reading Snead’s theory makes me feel very sad. I guess I’m just too much a romantic at heart to gladly accept what she has to say.
OK, back to the video. With all the makeup and computer software tools at the disposal of those who put together photo spreads in fashion magazines (and the type of billboards shown in the video) one wonders why they even need real women to appear in such photos. Perhaps they should use the computer to generate the perfect face and not worry about going through the hassle of all the steps shown in the video.
Actually, while I was watching the film, I began to think that the longer they worked on “correcting” and “beautifying” the model’s face, the less relevant the real flesh-and-blood woman became.
At what point in the video does the real woman disappear?
I’ve included a screenshot of the model, after her complete transformation, so you can see how little of her original look remains.
