Distorted beauty
You have to watch this video. You will see (in fast-motion) a plain young woman transformed into a glamorous model. Her beauty — courtesy of a team of professional make-up artists, hairdressers, lighting engineers, photographers and digital manipulators – is as astonishing as it is unattainable. She doesn’t look like anyone you know, anyone you’ll ever see walking down the street – or anyone you (or your daughter) could ever look like. She doesn’t even look like herself! Yet she’s out there, on billboards, in magazines, a representation of beauty. She, and all the other models, define beauty in our culture. They set the standard or, if not the “standard,” the goal: We want to look like that. Our girls want to look like that. Men want women to look like that.
But look like what? Like the product of…well, a shelf full of products? Like a manufactured object? Like a cgi? Much talk (although it seems to have produced little action) about the Dachau-level emaciation of models. But I wonder how many of us – especially how many young teens – understand that these models owe more to Photoshop than they do to lucky genes. This is unattainable, distorted, fabricated, contrived, counterfeit “beauty.” And I am finished ranting now.
