As content, human figures have served to express deeply cherished culture values, including beliefs about religion, politics, and personal and social identity ( Robertson and McDaniel 78). In other words, our body is a representation of our inner selves. Artists throughout the years have used the body to send messages to society. Maureen Conner's creation Thinner Than You is a good example of the pressure women feel about their bodies in today's society. Our appearance as become extremely important to us and women will go to great lengths to reach that look of perfection. But what is perfection? Who sets this bar? Should we blame society for the pressure or should we blame ourselves for being drawn into it? Has the body become such an ideal image that we have forgotten about our essence, our soul, our mind? Conner's empty dress also could be interpreted as an instance of the postmodern "empty vessel," a body drained of the illusion of the soul ( Robertson and McDaniel 76). Horace Miner wrote an article, "Body Ritual among the Nacirema" MIner claims, in this article, that the Nacirema's belief system is based on the fact that the human body is ugly and that its natural tendency is to debility and disease and that man's only hope is though ritual and ceremony. Miller also says that the Nacirema are devoted to shines and that everyone's household has one. The holy-mouth man, which is another main figure in this culture, Miller explains, the holy-mouth man opens the client's mouth and in using certain tools enlarges any holes which decay has created and than uses magical materials to put into the holes. This article, in case you have not guess, is really about American culture, Nacirema is actually American spelled backwards. The shines are bathrooms; everyone has one and is devoted to it, sound familiar? And the holy-mouth man is a dentist. He uses magical materials to fill in decay. This was a great article! It was a good and clever example of describing and using our own standards against us. This article, along with the Maureen Conner's creation Thinner Than You, are good representations of the extremes we will put our bodies though to maintian or create perfection. Is it worth it? Have we gone too far? What kind of examples are we setting for the future? Just think what we could do if we, as a whole, spent that kind of time developing our minds instead on our appearance.
MINER, HORACE. "BODY RITUAL AMONG NACIREMA."
AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOLGICAL ASSOCIATION. 58.3 (1956):
3. Print
Robertson Jean and McDaniel Craig. Themes of Contemporary Art:
Visual Art After 1980.
2nd ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc. 2010. 76,78.
Print.
To answer your question about who sets the limits of beauty, the answer is evident in your post:"In other words, our body is a representation of our inner selves." This is certainly a true statement. We set the limits of beauty. Sure, you and I don't directly decide what's fasionable for the elite, but our eagerness to look up to these trends in personal aesthetic only serves to perpetuate a skewed sense of beauty. Also, not everyone has the same idea of beauty, many people out right rejecting trends. One's senese of beauty is a projection of their personality, it all comes down to themselves in the end.
ReplyDeleteThere will always exist a pressure by society for individuals to be a certain way. "Beauty" is a very individual thing- different cultures and people have various opinions on what makes something or someone beautiful. I agree with you and Joe, Beauty comes down to the individual. A person is beautiful if they see them self as being beautiful- internal happiness is beautiful.
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