What is beauty

What Is Beauty?

Olivia Few N0424096 FASH20031

05 -1 2 Main Body

04 Introduction

06 -1 9 Appendix

13-15 References

20-23 The Final Three

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Contents WordCount: 1909

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‘Can beauty be defined by age, gender, colour, body shape or size? Who gets to decide?’ (CNN, 2011). Alene Dawson makes a valid point that isn’t everyone beautiful in their own unique way?

Why does the industry get to decide what looks right and what doesn’t? Women look to the media for what they should look like because there has never been enough diversity for women to believe that they look good the way they are. You rarely see out of the ordinary beauty images, where the models are a mixture of ethnicities, you just see the same sort of models for every brand and every campaign. If everyone was perfect and looked the same, how would anyone stand out, how would they express who they truly are? Jean-Claude Le Grand, L’Oreal’s Consumer Products and Corporate Diversity Director said that in fact beauty and diversity are intertwined, that there is no single global standard of beauty. He believes that there are different perspectives and different histories, ‘that the beauty market is diverse by definition’ (Ey.com, 2013). This concept of what is beauty and diversity together is shown threw a photo-shoot that is

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Beauty is viewed in numerous ways, by different individuals and those that are uncertain turn to the media for how they should look. There is no single type of beauty; it is a multiple-faced quality frame by different ethnic origins, aspirations, and expectations that reflect the world’s essential diversity, (L’Oreal, 2013). Researching into the topic of beauty was a real insight into how little diversity there is and how nothing is being done about it. Veronica Webb, see figure three, talks about her experience of being the first African-American to win a major cosmetics campaign when she signed on with Revlon in 1992,reported at CNN. She says, ‘For me personally it was like almost the impossible dream of the fashion industry, the biggest reward, the most money you could make, the highest level of commercial validation. And you know a barrier -- a real barrier, a glass ceiling that existed forever and it got broken,’ (CNN, 2011). Veronica was shocked at how far she had come with changing diversity in beauty but the fact that was only in 1992, 18 years after Beverly Johnson was the first African-American on the cover of Vogue, she felt it just wasn’t enough and can’t believe that there still isn’t enough being done.

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Figure 4 Figure 4

Figure 4 The portrayal of women on television has greatly changed in the last 20 years alone, in order to accommodate the changing roles of women in society and each shows the change behind the more modern representation of women, that can in fact be argued as to how real are the representations of the women and how that can affect those who are watching. Helen Ingham talks about the attributes of conventional beauty and how women in advertisements are typically tall, thin, with very long legs, perfect teeth and hair, and skin without a blemish in sight and how usually these women are dismembered in adverts showing parts of the body that need change or improvement, see figure four, (Aber 1995).

Women should be comfortable in the way they look and know that perfection isn’t real. Trying to fix their bodies is just giving the media what they want and allowing them to keep on thinking it’s acceptable to portray this impossible body image. “When Glamour magazine surveyed its readers in 1984, 75% felt too heavy and only 15% felt just right. Nearly half of those who were underweight, reported feeling too fat and wanting to diet.

Among a sample of college women, 40% felt overweight, while only 12% were actually too heavy” (Dines, Humez, 1995: 346).

This shows that women who are the correct size feel they are too heavy and need too loose weight due to adverts demonstrating that impossible images. It is evident that this preoccupation with weight is beginning at ever-earlier ages of women. The images shown are artificial and can only be achieved artificially, even this so called ‘natural look’ the media are saying requires much more preparation than women know.

Jean Kilbourne mentions that even though women are desperate to conform to the impossible standard set by the media, many women still go to great lengths to manipulate and change things about their bodies and faces, (CML, 2011).

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Looking further back, the Ancient Egyptians, Greeks and Romans loved make-up. A group of archaeologists found evidence of cosmetic kits containing primitive versions of mascara, foundation and lipsticks, see figure five.

Nevertheless, these early stages were exceptions to the rule as make-up was shunned for centuries after. In the 1800’s if women we seen wearing make-up they would be thought of as a prostitute or a stage actress, even Queen Victoria felt that make-up was unnecessary and in a public address referred to it as vulgar. Modesty was the defining beauty trend for many years, (Fit and health, 2013).

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To have this back would be impossible as many women feel that they are not dressed until they have a full face of make-up and the media have done that.

The ideal medieval women were seen as being hairless with their hairlines, eyebrows and even their eyelashes were plucked so Figure 6 that no hair was shown. A high forehead then was a sign of extreme beauty. Later in the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was all about hav- The women wanted a figure and would do pretty much anything ing a small waist, padding the to have it. They preferred bust and hips to even having the tiny waist and big emphasise the tiny size on the hips as opposed to having a waist, showing off the curves stick shaped body. they had, see figure six (Historical Ideals, 2012).

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Looking at how beauty was in history and then the notions of beauty of today and how much it has changed is unbelievable, how the fact it affects almost every experience we have, all you have to do is look at the marketing profession to see how they use various elements of beauty to sell their products.

When looking at advertising, Imran Siddiquee’s observations of women being their own worst beauty critics were really interesting. He talks about the media being made up of 90% men and ‘the idea that women are valuable only for their beauty, permeates nearly every facet of modern society, from the billboards we walk past to the social media we use daily’, see figure seven.

He’s saying that it is mainly the media that should get the blame for letting women be beauty-obsessed, body-shaming and misogynistic, (The Representation Project, 2013).

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Figure 8 Campaigns such as Doves ‘Real Beauty’, see figure eight, is a start to changing the diversity in beauty, as they have taken away your typical models and replaced them with real life people, showing their true beauty. But is that enough?. Dr. Pia de Solenni comments on the notions of beauty and ‘how we notice a particular look in the eyes, a gesture, an action towards someone or something else.’ How physical beauty can and should be a sign of an interior beauty; it should reveal an agreement between the beauty of the exterior and the beauty of the interior, (Murray Hill Institute, 2005).

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Showing that even at a first look, we don’t see everything beautiful about the person behind the make-up, behind the clothes, to find a person’s real beauty, you need to look closer into them.

For our photo shoot we wanted to represent the diversity in today’s modern Britain by using three models of different sizes, shapes and ethnicities.

We wanted to show that women shouldn’t let the media affect them and that they need to break free from this thought that their not beautiful and stop conforming to the media.

Vadim Steins sculptural photography about ‘The Ethical Beauty of Form’, really inspired us as each of the model’s he used, were often nude and partially wrapped in stretched out fabrics showing their sinuous forms and muscular shapes underneath, see figure nine. Steins work appreciates, first the existing beauty of a human being, then the more abstract beauty of all human forms, then the beautiful objects before reaching the even more immaterial notion of Beauty itself, (Fineartebook, 2013). We wanted to use some of the positions Stein had created but putting our own twist on it to show our models real beauty.

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We also looked at Solve Sundsbo’s work that was featured in Vogue Italia. The article was named Beauty in Wonderland and the shots Sundsbo took are incredible, they really capture the female form by using a range of different elements and images to outline the female shape, (Beauty Scene, 2013), see figure ten. We felt that the contrast with this and Steins work could really work but creating something of Sundsbo’s work, felt as if we were moving away from what we really wanted to produce. Therefore, before we went into the studio, we decided to take a few test shots to decide what positions we wanted to use and which ones showed off our concept in the best possible way, see figure eleven.

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We looked at using AnOther magazine for our work to feature in as we believe out of the chosen few, AnOther really worked well with our concept and our images, especially after looking though several issues, see figure twelve. The majority of Another’s readers are in the 25-44 demographic, (AnOther Mediakit, 2011), women who Figure 12 we felt would be interested in reading an article of this content. We want these women Looking though the magazine to feel that they’re all we could see that the style of beautiful the way they are and image we wanted to create that shouldn’t obey to the would fit perfectly. We believed media. We felt that these women that the simplicity of our turned to AnOther for a good, images, with the dark lighteninspiring read, which could ing, saying all it has to say with potentially influence them in little editing, fitted into some of some way. the shoots that have previously featured in AnOther.

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Using Vadim Stein’s work as our inspiration, we used white material to demonstrate the hold the media has over image conscious women that maybe influenced to conform a certain way and look the same as every other women.

The pulling motion we used shows the hold over the women, pulling them into a confide space of ‘uniqueness’ with limited boundaries and then the pushing out of the bodies shows an indication that the women are trying to break the boundaries and get free of what the media wants, wanting to keep their individuality, see figure thirteen. To show the notions of beauty we stripped back our models of their clothing to show that women are made up of the same body parts but individually, underneath the clothing, still look different. So with this, we applied heavy make-up to show the ideas of what the media expect women to look like, see figure fourteen.

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Figure 15 As a group, we weren’t overly Two of the models didn’t mind impressed with our first shoot; being topless, which worked out we felt that the images didn’t for the best as we were really portray what we were trying to able to capture to figure in a say and just didn’t do the better light. We tired some models any justice. The different positions of Steins material that was used just made from before that we felt would the models look like they had say what we wanted when it white clothes and this wasn’t the came to finalising the photos, look we were going for. see figure fifteen.

Therefore we contacted a student photographer to help us re-shoot but unfortunately one of our models wasn’t able to make it so a group member kindly stepped in to take her place. Surprisingly, with more time and different lighting we managed to capture some brilliant images.

We felt overall; that our selections of final images were exactly what we wanted. We didn’t do much to edit them as we felt that was going away from what we were saying; we touched up the lightening by making them slightly darker and removed areas of the photo that we not supposed to be there, see figure thirteen. The real final question is what is beauty? Beauty is what you make it; beauty should be from the interior just as much as the exterior and the media should change in terms of diversity and make women not feel as if they have to be a certain way. This is what our images are saying.

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References Page 13

(2011). AnOther Magazine Media Kit. Available: http://www.anothermag.com/content/advertising/Another-Media-Pack-2011.pdf Last accessed 17 November 2013 (2013). Beauty in Wonderland by Solve Sundsbo for Vogue Italia Beauty September 2013. Available: http://www.beautyscene.net/beautyscene/beauty-in-wonderland-by-solve-sundsbo-for-vogue-italia-beauty-september-2013/ Last accessed 17 November 2013.

Alene Dawson. (2011). What is Beauty and who has it?. Available: http://edition.cnn.com/2011/LIVING/06/29/global.beauty.culture. Last accessed 15th November 2013.

Dines, G. and Humez, J.(1995): Gender, Race and Class in Media. London: Sage Dr. Pia de Solenni. (2005). The Notion of Beauty. Special Edition Newsletter. 2 (2) Helen Ingham. (1995). The Portrayal of Women on Television. Available: http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/ Students/hzi9401.html Last accessed 17 November 2013.

Imran Siddiquee. (2013). Women Are Not Their Own Worst Beauty Critics. Available: http://www.missrepresentation.org/media/women-are-not-their-own-worst-beauty-critics/ Last accessed 17 November 2013.

Jean Kilbourne. (2011). Beauty...and the beast advertising. Available: http://www.medialit.org/reading-room/beautyand-beast-advertising Last accessed 17 November 2013.

Karen Hochrein. The eye of the beholder: where L’Oreal finds beauty. Available: http://www.ey.com/GL/ en/Issues/Business-environment/Leading-across-borders--inclusive-thinking-in-an-interconnectedworld---The-eye-of-the-beholder--where-LOreal-finds-beauty. Last accessed 15th November 2013.

L’Oreal. (2013). 2001 - Present Day: Diversity of Beauty. Available: http://www.loreal.com/group/history/2001-present-day.aspx Last accessed 17 November 2013.

Molly Edmonds. (2013). 10 Ways The Definition of Beauty Has Changed.Available: http://health.howstuffworks.com/wellness/hygiene-tips/10-ways-the-definition-of-beauty-has-changed1112.htm Last accessed 17 November 2013.

The History of the Ideal of Beauty. 2012. Historical Ideals, [blog] 7th April 2012, Available at: http://historicalideals.tumblr.com/ [Accessed: 17 Nov 2013].

Vadim Stein’s Sculptural Photography: The Ethical Beauty of Form. 2013. Fine Art eBooks, [blog] 11 February 2013, Available at: http://fineartebooks.wordpress.com/2013/02/11/vadim-steins-sculptural-photography-the-ethical-beauty-of-form/ [Accessed: 17 Nov 2013].

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Figure 1. What is Beauty Test Shot. (Own image). 28 October 2013 Figure 2. Studio setting. (Own image). 28 October 2013 Figure 3. Nicholas Hunt / Patrick McMullan, (2013), Oprah Winfrey Hosts an Evening With Ralph Lauren [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.style.com/peopleparties/celebritysearch/person4771/slideshow?loop=0&iphoto=4&play=false&cnt=5 [Accessed 20 November 13].

Figure 4. (2012), Do you find yourself more attracted to pretty/conventional beauty or ugly/interesting/ characteristic beauty? [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.harvardgenerator.com/references/online-image [Accessed 20 November 13].

Figure 4. Show studio, (2013), Fashion East [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.harvardgenerator.com/ references/online-image [Accessed 20 November 13] Figure 4. Meredith Nash, (2013), A brand for social change? The myth of Dove’s ‘real beauty’ [ONLINE].

Available at: https://theconversation.com/a-brand-for-social-change-the-myth-of-doves-real-beauty-15795 [Accessed 20 November 13].

Figure 5. (2012), Ancient Egypt Cosmetics [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.egyking.info/2012/12/ perfume-and-cosmetics-of-ancient.html [Accessed 20 November 13].

Figure 6. (2012), The History of the Ideal of Beauty [ONLINE]. Available at: http://historicalideals.tumblr. com/[Accessed 20 November 13].

Figure 7. Imran Siddiquee, (2013), Women Are Not Their Own Worst Beauty Critics [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.missrepresentation.org/media/women-are-not-their-own-worst-beauty-critics/ [Accessed 20 November 13].

Figure 8. Emily Nicholson, (2013), How leading brands can make and break the rules to increase impact [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/partner-zone-brand-union/ brands-make-break-rules-impact [Accessed 20 November 13].

Figure 9. Vadim Stein, (2013), Vadim Stein [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.artlimited.net/14991 [Accessed 20 November 13].

Figure 10. Sølve Sundsbø, (2013), Beauty in Wonderland by Solve Sundsbo for Vogue Italia Beauty September 2013 [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.beautyscene.net/beautyscene/beauty-in-wonderlandby-solve-sundsbo-for-vogue-italia-beauty-september-2013/ [Accessed 20 November 13].

Figure 11. What is Beauty Test Shoot take 2. (Own image). 28 October 2013 Figure 12. AnOther, (2013), AnOther Magazine | Issue 25 [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.anothermag.com/magazine [Accessed 20 November 13].

Figure 13. Pulling in Both Directions. (Own image). 31 October 2013 Figure 14. Full of Make-up. (Own image). 31 October 2013 Figure 15. Selection of Final Images. (Own image). 31 October 2013

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Appendix Page 16

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The Final Three Page 20

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