Category: Constellation Yr1

In today’s lecture we had looked at reclaiming beauty but in more detail discussing body positivity and how women are a main suspect due to how they also judge themselves and that a lot have eating disorders.

• How do you define body positivity?
• Body positivity is accepting and appreciating all of your body and other peoples human types. A good example of showing this is the image below as it is showing women with different human body types with their conditions visible.

• One response that is provocative is the art to question body positivity
  • This of which they have impacts on women to have eating disorders if they don’t look like the ideal body shape
  • It makes girls think they are not good enough
• The confidence gap – Is where women are judged on their appearance, this of which creates a barrier on career paths for them.
• “[W]omen feel that their accomplishments are not as great as those around them […] and this then becomes a barrier to a successful career trajectory. – Sarah Banet-Weiser, “I’m Beautiful the Way I Am”
  • They feel like they can’t accomplish much
  • It’s an upsetting statement
• Sarah also believed that the confidence gap in the 1900’s it was payed more attention to in girl hood and seen as a crisis.
• Jezebel which is a company wanted before and after images of girls who have been airbrushed as it had become an issue linking to how women saw themselves and the confidence it had given them. An example of this is shown on http://jezebel.com/278978/the-annotated-guide-to-making-faith-hill-hot
• Looking at the Dove video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk 
  • Analyse the Dove Beauty ad.
    • An artist defines the people by how they see themselves and what they have been told by others, then a stranger is told to get to know them and then describe them to the man giving at the end two images of each person
  • What is the story it is trying to tell?
    • It shows women they are more beautiful than what they really think they look like but also what they believe they look like
    • It also shows that everyone is harsh on themselves as they don’t want to say and know they are beautiful as they have to be told that they are.
  • How successful do you think it is at telling that story?
    • I believe it was a successful story as everyone who saw the two images had preferred and what shocked by how the stranger described them which was more accurate, as it made them think about how they should see themselves. As the world can be very judgmental.
  • How do you think the ad measures up in terms of body positivity?
    • The ad measures up due showing how people can be critical for how they look or how someone close to them has told them how they look, however with the limitations it could work better to show body positivity.
  • Can you identify any limitations with the ad?
    • Looking at the ad the limitations of what they did show was that all the women weren’t overweight or skinny they were all a neutral size but also they looked natural as there were none showing different human body types such as visual defects.

Overall, when looking back at this lecture of Reclaiming Beauty? I had found it very interesting as I had agreed with what was said about women and how they see themselves. This was mainly when we started looking at the confidence gap but also the dove advert, from this when looking at it myself the thoughts that had gone through my head if I was in that situation would of been the same. This had made me think that us women judge ourselves before we speak. But from this lesson it gave me a clear insight for what body positivity is exactly know as before there were parts that were bit unclear to understand for example the confidence gap.

 

This week in Politics of beauty, we have been looking at Queering beauty. Where we learnt about the gender and desire. But also what intersectionality is and the term of which it is understanding identity.

Discussion:

What if a girl / woman doesn’t have some of these markers of femininity?

• They would have less confidence and wouldn’t feel like they are attractive
• They could be seen as a male and feel like one as they don’t have the female aspects

What if a boy / man does?

• That they have lost the masculinity and can be seen as more feminine

What does femininity have to do with beauty?

• You would feel more attractive than if you weren’t feminine then you wouldn’t feel beauty
• In today’s society you don’t have to feel feminine to feel beautiful

Heteronormative: Ideology which promotes heterosexuality as the normal or preferred sexuality

• The traditional rules of beauty in the west women and girls must appear at submissive within the tradition
• Laura Mulvey defines the ideas of beauty feminine to the male gaze.
• The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly. – Laura Mulvey 
  • There is a system on how females are seen by male figures
  • Women can practise the male gaze too (By how they look but also with what clothes they can wear)
  • “she holds the looks, plays to signifies male desire”

 

Looking at image 1 this is a case of male gaze due to the fact that the women who is dressed up with shaved legs and bold makeup is lead across the man being submissive showing that he has all the power and that he is in charge of her. Where he’s touching her and allowing him to do things to her.

Looking at the image 2 called “Judgement of Paris” by Ivo Salinger shows another case of the male gaze due to the the fact that there is only one male who is surrounded by three females, this shows myself that all the females are being submissive to one male showing that they look up to him to be naked in front of him when he is fully dressed and by what it looks like an apple in his hand

• “In a heterosexist world that continues to tell us that femininity is the ultimate available object for universal consumption and contempt, taking a stand on and through (queer) femininity is both intense pleasure and clear and present danger.”- Ulrika Dahl, Femmes of Power (2008)
  • A example can be if a man wolf whistles at a girl and she ignores it the initial response from the man being ignore can be turned into anger which can lead to violence
  • Doesn’t cause male desire but can be dangerous as it challenges everything in a heterosexist world
• femininity can be practised on with anyone who has a body
• beauty doesn’t have to be feminine at all

During this lesson about Queering beauty, I had found that male or female we can all still be judge by our appearances. For example if a male looks more feminine they can be then judged not by their beauty but by what gender they are, but it can be shown in my eyes the femininity can be a big part to people in todays society as we all want to be seen attractive. Another part in the lecture that I had found shocking was that women have to be seen as submissive to men as they have always been seen as superior. From this lesson I had found it challenging in places when it came to figuring out what the passages meant with what the people had said but also easy due to giving points about feminine features.

With the lecture I had today, we have discussed in groups what the intersecting of beauty is like.

• Intersectionality – Kimberlie Crenshaw gave it a name
• We live in a world with a variety of identities which includes race and gender
• You either get privileges or you get discriminated
• Intersectional approach in the beauty industries

Race & beauty

• Creates a narrative around exotic beauty
• Race within the beauty industry is so much better however there are still structural barriers
• Whiteness is the majority – it is incorrect ideology, presents the inequality of race

Cultural appropriation

• Braids (accessible, affordable) hair
• Accused of creating cultural appropriation
  • Stealing another cultures traditions
    • Bell hooks “cultural canabinism”
  • Stealing other cultures practises (Kim Kardashian image with braids)
    • Can lead to invisibility and financial exploitation
  • Braiding gets put in advertising
  • No acknowledge of the history
  • Mainstream popular culture celebrates racial differences
  • Celebrate being diverse
  • Sexual stereotypes of African American women
  • Revival of old stereotypes but in a post-modern way
  • Likes seeing different representations
  • Black model in leopard print
    • Goes back to African cultures

Throughout this lecture today, I had learnt that being a different race or gender it can be a 50/50 chance you can get a privilege or be discriminated by what you look like if you are not white. I had also learnt that the majority of seeing people in beauty is mainly shown as white not black where I believe it should be equal and in today’s society it is now seen more often in magazines and adverts. However, what I had also found different and fasinating was when we learnt about the hair braids and of which it is was said that cause it is a tradition for black people to have them that it was unusual for example Kim Kardashian to have them in her hair and steal their culture.

At the start of today’s lecture our warm up activity we had set ourselves into small groups and were allocated by Jen which image we would be analysing this of which my group had been given

Janine Antoni’s Loving Care

What’s the message of this image?

• Cleaning the floor with her hair but is making a mess
• Black and white to give an edgy effect to make you think if its blood or paint
• Shown looking down on the person to give an interesting view
• Dressed all in one colour
• A bucket beside her that could be paint but looks more like blood

Modernism and the flapper

• Smoothing out feminine figures
• The name given is called the ‘abject’ also referred to abjection
• Julia Kristeva- that the abject exists as a “border”. It is a site of bodily ambiguity where what is inside threatens to overflow.
• Elizabeth Grosz ‘Abjection is a sickness at one’s own body’ – we identify our bodies as unclean and contaminated
• Pus, urine, semen, breast milk is all seen as abject known for contamination
• Cellulite, fat are all seen as unpleasant
• “[U]napproachable and intimate”, the abject is a part of the body.
• She argues that the abject is a“confrontation with the feminine”. (image of a girl asleep who’s bled through her clothes thats gone on the bed)
• Second wave feminism during the 1970-1980s, was happening mainly with upper class white women in the west. Reclaiming all the bad thing that was took about feminism
• There was an approach of celebration to feminity
• Carolee Schneemann, Blood Work Diary (1972)
  • Period Blood
• Why do you think the abject is gendered to be feminine?
  • Because women are seen to be beautiful
  • Women are told to have a higher standard than men for beauty
  • Due to women having periods each month they would less likely to be employed due to them having to have sick days to get better
• Gender essentialism- The idea that women and men have a set of fixed attributes or characteristics—often understood to be biologically determined.
  • Not all women bleed so that to say that they do says that some women are more feminine due to the fact they bleed more than others
• Bridesmaids women’s comedy
• Discuss the advert: https://be/P4DDpS685iI
  • How do you think it engages with and / or rejects the rules of beauty and the idea of abjection?
  • It gives women both options that if they want to shave that they can
  • Normal shaving adverts don’t show hair they show the shaving foam first and then them stroking the body part and it being no hair anymore.
  • Pushing boundaries

Research Activity:

• Identify an artwork, artefact, image, advert, etc. that engages with the idea of the abject.

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a13034226/bodyform-advert-first-show-period-blood/

https://www.businessinsider.com/feminine-hygiene-ad-crushes-period-stigma-2016-6?r=US&IR=T

• Explain its relevance to today’s topic: is it critical, regulatory, both? Why?
• They are both body form adverts showing blood, the first video was the first advert to show actual period blood instead of coloured water to represent blood.
• The adverts give young female girls who haven’t had period the reality for what they will expect when they are older and show that they have nothing to be afraid of and that they are prepared for when it happens
• the second video shows that female athletes fight through sport injuries and shows actual footage of real blood showing that blood doesn’t stop women through sport so why should we view period blood different. As women can fight through whatever blood it is.
• Its quite critical and shocking

Throughout this lecture I had found it very useful although quite challenging at the start when we were giving the image “Loving Care” this was because as a group we couldn’t tell if it was blood or paint due to the image being in black and white. From this it showed me another perspective of an image where you can’t just say what it is without sitting and thinking about what the image is trying to show. In the lecture I had also found it very interesting with when we started to looked for videos ourselves of women showing the feminine side where the first image was to showing the first advert to use red blood, this showed me that women were becoming stronger in the scenes of the nation. But also the second video that we had found showing that women are actually stronger that what men actually think, gave me the insight that todays society has changed a lot that when looking back in the past.

On today’s lecture we learnt about ‘Rethinking the rules of beauty’ and how it helps us think about the views change into chronological order from the early 21^st century.

• Modernism was at its peaks in the 20^thcentury
• Marcel Duchamp ‘Nude’ Picture1 says he was to capture the movement in a static place
• Beauty produces the “mental state of relaxation”. – Christine Battersby
• Realism is to reproduce the beauty and feeling
• A function of realism is to “preserve various consciousnesses from doubt” – J.F.Lyotard
• Open up the realistic representation, to make us feel uncomfortable
• People didn’t understand who they were which made them question themselves (ww1-ww2)
  • They wanted viewers to feel disconnected
• They wanted to capture more than one perspective
• “I think in particular that it is the aesthetic of the sublime that modern art (including literature) finds its impetus and the logic of the avant-gardes finds its axioms.”J.F. Lyotard,
  • When we produce the sublime in our work that is the motivation
  • Modernist art doesn’t want beauty it wants sublime
  • Gives us new rules to understand beauty
  • It challenged the status within the culture
• Lots of modernist people thought bodies were more than mechanical parts
• The “beginning of the twentieth century” marked the “heyday of industrial aesthetics”. Umberto Eco, On Beauty: A History of a Western Idea
  • It becomes the new beauty in the west
• The figure of this period is the modern manikin Picture2
  • France 1920s
  • Was painted in a metallic sheen and bend into sharp angles
  • Had minimal features on its face and streamline to show industrial tastes
• The manikins and figures show a context of new qualities in the modern world, they didn’t just have a functional quality.
  • These figures worked to “legitimate women’s presence […] as active consumers and spectators” while simultaneously” position[ing] them as part of the public spectacle”. – Kim Toffoletti
  • They showed women how to dress
  • It showed women on how to be beautiful by teaching them
• Models were told to walk in a very angler way like a robot when on a catwalk
  • They were told how to pose

Revisit your collage and consider:

• How does it disrupt beauty ideals?
  • They have disrupted beauty ideals due that they have gone back to being soft
• How does it reproduce beauty ideals?
  • The collage shows that women are always being told what beauty is
  • It was soft to being rigid looking and it has now become mixed
  • The body shape links to looking more like the manikin and figure look by being small.

From this lecture I had found it very different, this was due to the fact I had strongly been surprised by when in class we talked about the manikins and how women in todays catwalks or pageants are seen to represent the way how a manikin would look, posing and walking in very sharp angles and not having much of a facial feature, and how its changed to be shown as beautiful. But I also learnt that it’s like being a young toddler or new born on how they have to look and dress which showed me that women aren’t independent for themselves.

For the second lecture into the term, I have learnt about the policing the rules of beauty and what it is like.

Image analysis

• Western beauty ideal
• Life is centred around her winning and her only good is to be the most beautiful person
  • Hence her ecstatic and overwhelming facial expressions
• Pink is a superficial colour
• Has to be told to believe it
• Barbie figure – blonde, skinny
• The girl behind has dark hair
• She is made to look bright and light composed to the girl in the background
• Critical engagement of beauty pageants

Re-Image analysis from image above

• Symbolism
• Salience – what is most prominent in the image
• Foreground/background
• Colour
  • White dress could represent purity
  • Winning a pageant
  • Ecstatic to have won the pageant
  • Being awarded for being most beautiful
  • Competition – the person in the background is seen as inferior and not classed as beautiful anymore
  • Pink portrays feminine traits
  • Emphasis of fists being clenched mean so much

The politics of beauty

• Women follow curved lines rather than straight and rigid angles
• Beauty pageants
  • Can be perclared as a positive and negative
• Definition of beauty was set
• Ideal femininity became seen as small, dainty objects and people
  • Seen so easily told what to do
• More beautiful the women the easier to find a weakness in them
• Female masochism – willing to be hurt
• Women reinforce weakness

Discussion

“[W]here [beauty] is highest in the female sex, [it] almost always carries with it an idea of weakness and imperfection. Women are very sensible of this; for which reason, they learn to lisp, to totter in their walk, to counterfeit weakness, and even sickness.”

“The ideal woman, then, is one who engages in a practice of what today we would call female masochism, willingly obeying the dictates of her   sublime master.”

Do you agree with burke and mellors position that the ‘ideal women’ performs weakness/submissiveness

•  Yes, as years ago women would submissively agree that men were more superior
• The ideal women perform weakness as a tool to get what she wants flirting with men pretending to be weak when they are more than capable of doing it

What role might this representation of feminine submissiveness serve in the culture

• Still happening for a feminine critical response
• Creates a raking between men and women
• Women lower ircey (weak and submissive (inferior)
• Men higher ircey (superior, strong)
  • Strong, powerful protectors

Ideology – ‘a system of beliefs’

Ideolog – “the very condition of our experience in the word unconscious precisely in that it is unquestioned, taken for granted”

• Reveals its own imitations
• Pageant girls represent the ideal women from that state
• What we define as beauty is cultural constructed
• Submission becomes on ideal in its own right
• Eugenics: A set of beliefs and practices that seeks to “improve” a population through genetic intervention.
• White influence feminity 18^th19^thcentury
• When people are fatter they are seen as more beautiful
• Now beautiful people are seen as slim and toned
• Can afford plastic surgery in order to make them the most beautiful ideal women

Mid to the late 1800

• Focused on beauty and innocence
• Rewarded for being submissive (money, prizes)
• Being told whats beautiful and rewarded for doing that and being submissive
• White influence = wholesome and pure
• 1910-1920  babies were inspected by doctors and awarded the most purest ideal baby (hygiene)
• 1950s it then went out of style due to outbreaks of diseases from babies not getting their injections

“Aesthetic hierarchy” regulates beauty standards and ideals

Image analysis (same image from the start)

• White influenced, skinny, blonde aesthetic hierarchy
• Might have been brought up in the culture where all she aspires to be is to be considered the most beautiful person in her state country

From today’s lecture I found it very interesting, due to when we started to analysis the image of the pageant girl and what the standards actually showed when it was shown that a blonde headed girl had one where the brunette girl came as runner up. This was when it was clear to me that it can be very biased when judging the prettiest woman. The part that I had found very unusual was when baby pageant were allowed back in 1910 and how the mothers would get prizes if there child won which showed me that some girls won’t have a say if they want to do pageants if they’ve done it from a young age because it could be their mothers that are making them do it.

For the first week of Constellation learning about the Politics of Beauty we discussed and were taught about the rules of beauty where we would Explore constructions of beauty with specific cultural and historical contexts. But we would also learn about the Romantic and Victorian period in this lecture but then in the other lectures we will learn different themes such as :policing the rules of beauty, rethinking the rules of beauty, rejecting the rules of beauty, appropriating beauty, queering beauty, reclaiming beauty.

Discussion groups 4-5

• What is an ideal model
  • All tall models
  • Good social presence
  • Judgy old fashioned model agency
  • Strong facial features
  • Confident
  • Elegant
  • Skinny
  • Naturally pretty
  • Young
  • Run way models
• Why do you think these characteristics are ideal?
  • Follows a standard
  • Only recently people who are different have just been shown as beauty in shows in today society
  • Old fashioned clothes
  • Didn’t want them looking different
• Do they reflect your personal ideas about beauty or is it what you think people want to see or is it maybe a little of both?
  • They don’t reflect my personal ideas as they are very old ideas compared to today’s society
  • Its what people wanted to see back then but not now
• What do you think has influenced your ideas?
  • Just our knowledge of what the fashion industry was like

Establishing the rules of beauty

• Theres a dominate culture, rules are repeated for beauty
• Romanticism – it’s a period of time it’s an artistic it musical it came about western Europe in end 1700’s
• Was very popular 1800-1890’s
• The idea of emotion and individual and romanticize the past and medieval ideas
• Key idea attention of the beautiful/sublime was another way of ordering things (it continues to exists today)
• Edmund burke, key philosopher in this period, Irish statesmen
• A philosophical enquiry into the origin of our ideas of sublime and beautiful
• Beautiful- They pleasure us, things are well formed, calm and pleasing, sublime – has the power to compel us, nature and landscapes
• Preference of sublime over the beautiful, something small and delicate, calling it sublime gives it a name and a rule
• Quote from Christine Battersby description of beauty ‘mental state of relaxation produced by the physical encounter with objects that are small, smooth, without sharp contrasts or angles, and with delicacy of form or colour’.
• Female beauty is always linked together, where beauty is seen as small things where women were not seen as big where men were seen as bold and sharp as they overruled and seen as sublime.

Did burkes rules of beauty influenced your role as a model scout?

• I think it did influence me, as I had found it interesting what modelling was like 100 years ago and how much it has changed from today’s society as they were very delicate, small, naturally pretty and the types of clothes.

Design a beauty product that either follows or challenges burkes rules for beauty?

• Black liquid eyeliner, to create sharp, bold, strong and delicate making it relaxing. Strong powerful women with bold makeup standing out.

During the first lecture back to term 2, I had found it very interesting and surprised that when we discussed in small group about what an ideal model would be like. How many points we had said, this was because I felt that you didn’t really know how many things a model would need until we actually thought about it and wrote it down and how strict modelling can be for women. I had also learnt about the term of beautiful seen as being pleasure but the sublime can be seen to compel us and how it was still being used in todays society by models needing to know if they are beautiful when they win a pageant.

For my post this week I have merged session 7 & 8 together as one, this is because not only did it happen in our lecture lesson, but I had found it a lot easier to gather my information about what I had learnt. The first thing that I had found interesting is that Thomas more was had created a perfect city called utopia in 1516 as a drawing, where as I had then discovered that Sir Ebenezer had produced garden cities where the ideas became sensible for house planning. Furthermore, the Grand Avenue was successful as it had provided social care and railway links to all routes to create easy transport access. However, I had learnt that when using the Ebenezer Howards principles, I had also learnt that the Letchworth garden city pubs and shops. For session 8 I had discovered that the ManTownHuman Manifesto was built with nature and isn’t important to humans, Austin Williams had turned everything on its head where he links in the Marinetti 100year ago as I had learnt that if we were the same and didn’t change anything in today’s society we would become boring and restricted where he also believes that architects shouldn’t have to follow rules. However, one part that I had found interesting was Albert Speer Hilters architect made everyone think that they were the most powerful country in the world, but it had turned out everything was over scaled showing that the space wasn’t as big as they had made out it to be giving the end result that Germany weren’t the greatest country.

For this lecture about Biomimicry, I firstly learnt what it actually means this of which it is said to be the imitation of natural biological designs or processes in engineering or invention. The next part I had found out is Biomorphic is resembling or suggesting the forms of living organisms. Once discovering about these points, I had then moved onto learning what nature had done first this of which in my lecture had consisted of:

• The wheel
• Bacterium
• Steel beam
• Wing bone of a bird

Whereas the next part were things that we have invented by looking at nature itself which were the:

• Greater burdock because they stuck to animal fur and tops they’d invented
• Velcro Gecko which was fine mesh worked allowing humans to climb up buildings how a gecko does

Overall with this lecture I had found it very interesting as although I’d never thought about what was said it had actually made my understanding much better about Biomimicry although my notes I had wrote were very short on this lecture I had found it difficult to feel strongly for it.

In session 5 for constellation, I was strongly brought to attention when it had said ‘Neo Futurism is the cross pollination of art’ for this I thought it was unusual but interesting when I had thought about it. However, in this lecture I didn’t really have much interest as it went on through the day. From this I had then only pulled out the main parts which I thought were interested myself this of which finding out that the three dimensions of energy trilemma are:

• Energy security
• Energy equity
• Environmental sustainability

I had also found the reserves different due to me not knowing about them this of which consisted of:

Coal reserves – USA, Russian federation, China, Australia, India, rest world

Crude oil reserves – Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, Canada, Iran, Iraq, rest world

Natural gas reserves – Russian federation, Iran, Qatar, Turkmenistan, Saudi Arabia, rest world

And the final part in this lecture that I was strongly intrigued was the Maggie’s cancer caring centre, this was to the fact it could take your mind away from the circumstances you with would never happen in life for anyone where it was a place for people to meet who understood but it was also because Maggie was also dealing with the issue herself.