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.
Tags: Beauty
