Make-Up Exploration
Georgie Kennett
Victoria’s Secret recently had a campaign for “The Perfect Body,” which displayed seven models, all with the identical super thin and fit bodies.
The extremely thin models shown in the Victoria’s Secret campaign are promoting a very unhealthy way of life. The average model is 5’10” and weighs about 115 pounds.
Dove is a company that had a campaign for “Real Beauty.” This showed women of various heights and weights, all of whom are healthy and realistic.
Dove reached out to every different body type, skin colour, hair colour, and everything else that makes people unique. They showed skinny women, women with beauty marks, women with short hair, and other varieties. This campaign was extremely successful and it gave young girls, as well as women, the confidence they need.
Image References: Chen, Y. (no date) ‘Victoria“s Secret’s ”Perfect Body" Campaign Is Far From Perfect’. ClickZ. Available at: http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2380540/victoria-s-secret-s-perfect-body-campaign-is-far-from-perfect (Accessed: 2 January 2015).
Perfection in Society
Throughout history, art, poetry, literature, fashion, and other societal factors have had an impact on how people have perceive human beauty. However, it was not until the creation of silent movies, and then the introduction of televisions into our homes, that humans were exposed to so many hours each week of themes linked to how we should look.
Today, there is concern and alarm that the overall impact of the media has become so powerful, that people, especially young girls and young women, are progressively comparing themselves to clinically underweight professional models, and setting themselves unrealistic and unnatural targets.
The fashion industry has for many decades paraded underweight females when displaying their wares. Being as thin as current fashion models is not only detrimental for physical health, but may also damage mental health. Many say that the increased rates of eating disorders, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia, are partly due to more females having a negative body image, caused by media exposure.
More and more girls are looking towards cosmetic surgery to enhance their appearance, worrying statistics support this.
The picture to the left is of the ‘real life Barbie and Ken’ Valeria Lukyanova and Justin Jedlica.
Justin claims “Children play with Barbie and Ken all the time, it is fed to us from a very young age that they are the epitome of what is beautiful or what is handsome”. Do these views stem from what we are taught as a child? Is the judgement we make towards people purely the influence of others? If you grow up believing that such an object is so beautiful in every way with society suggesting those who look like barbie is a great thing then unsurprisingly an unhealthy obsession will occur.
Such obsession has been adopted by the two, Valeria Lukyanova believes in not eating or drinking but living off the air, hoping to one day not rely on food and water which is unbelievable since a body would simply not survive on air alone.
Image: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2272066/Real-life-Barbie-Ken-Valeria-Lukyanova-Justin-Jedlica-meet-hate-sight-other.html (Accessed: 6 January 2015).
There is a new underlife in plus size modelling where by instead of being too fat to model the models are too skinny, we have lived in a society for so long where by there is so much pressure to be skinny and petite all the time with plus size women being discriminated, plus size models are now being asked to wear fat pads to gain measurements in certain areas of the body.
"I started when I was 7, and I was pretty much straight-sized until I was 13 or 14. Then, I started to get hips and boobs. And, I got nitpicked at: 'She has to be these certain measurements, and she has to look a certain way.' And, that was just way too much. So, I gave it up until I was 18 or 19. Then, a plus agent reached out. I was like, 'What is this plus size you speak of?' It’s really progressed in the past couple of years — so much heat on women with fuller bodies.
It’s nice that a girl who cannot be represented by a straight-size agency is still represented. In a straight-size world, she would not be represented because she’s too big, but then according to the world of plus-size or full-figured, she’s not big enough. Plus-size blogger CeCe Olisa felt disappointed when she learned about padding. “You think you're straying away from the media's "be skinny" mindset by embracing plus-size," she says. “Then, you realize even that’s an impossible ideal. It’s frustrating.”
They come as a set — pairs of flesh-colored butt, breast, and thigh pads, along with a spandex girdle to stuff them in — and are packed in a little, black bag. They're part of the standard equipment a plus-size model carries. Sabina, who’s about a size 12, often needs pads to fit the size 14 or 16 samples of clothing that she’s asked to model. This is not uncommon: She says she uses pads in about half her shoots, and all the models we spoke to have used them. "Now that I’m thinking about it, it’s absolutely true [that no one feels the right size]. These other girls are being pressured to be a size 2 and they still feel too big, and with us its like ‘If you could put on a few, that’d be great’ or ‘You’re losing too much weight.’"
The Trick Plus-Size Models Use To Look Even Bigger’ (no date). Refinery29. Available at: http://www.refinery29.com/plus-size-models-wear-fat-suits-photos (Accessed: 10 January 2015).
Dr. Stephen Marquardt has studied human beauty for years in his practice of oral and maxillofacial surgery. Dr. Marquardt performed cross-cultural surveys on beauty and found that all groups had the same perceptions of facial beauty. He also analyzed the human face from ancient times to the modern day. Through his research, he discovered that beauty is not only related to phi, but can be defined for both genders and for all races, cultures and eras with the beauty mask which he developed and patented. This mask uses the pentagon and decagon as its foundation, which embody phi in all their dimensions. There is a male and a female mask apparantly defining beauty that such celebrities such as Tom Cruise and Angelina Jolie fit. It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and there is indeed some truth to this. Each of us is attracted to different features in others that we may consider beautiful. Furthermore, inner beauty is more important than physical beauty, and any of us will be perceived as more attractive with a kind smile than an angry sneer. All that said though, our perceptions of beauty are very definitely related to mathematical proportions found in the human form that are related to the golden ratio. People whose facial dimensions vary significantly from this ratio will be perceived by most to be unattractive or even deformed and grotesque.
Meisner, G. (2014) ‘Beauty in the Human Face and the Golden Ratio’. Phi 1.618: The Golden Number. Available at: http://www.goldennumber.net/beauty/ (Accessed: 15 February 2015).
To realistically portray the late Anna Nicole Smith, actress Agnes Bruckner had to go from a B bra cup size to a DD to play the star in the Lifetime biopic The Anna Nicole Story, but she wasn't willing to go under the surgeon's knife to achieve the look.
So the filmmakers turned to Oscar-winning special effects makeup artist Greg Cannom, who designed state-of-the art prosthetic breasts that were applied during four-hour-long fitting sessions to the 27-year-old each morning prior to shooting. This is really interesting in relation to the beauty ideal because Anna Nicole Smith was such an influencial woman that women would kill to be. Many men lusted over her body and many women wanted her body so that men would lust after them. I am intregued to see if I could possibly do a makeup like this with prosthetics, I think it would be a huge challange but could potentially be really rewarding. I struggle with moulding techniques so it would be a good opportunity for me to practice and improve my skills. Oala, I. and Moodie, A. (2013) ‘Agnes Bruckner goes from B-cup to DD to play Anna Nicole Smith...without undergoing breast surgery’, 18 June. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2343496/Agnes-Bruckner-goes-B-cup-DD-play-Anna-Nicole-Smith--undergoing-breast-surgery.html (Accessed: 27 January 2015).
Plus Size Models
The Real Life Barbie and Ken
Stephen Marquardt Theory
This fashion editorial shoot using large cheek prosthetic pieces is really different and out there. The makeup overall implies anorexia and a petite frame possibly promoting the size 0 ideal as something beautiful and fashionable.
The two images above are from the book : Gair, J. and Klum, H. (2006) Body Painting: Masterpieces by Joanne Gair. United States: Universe Publishing. where Matthew Rolston has created images of bodypainting makeups that represent and reflect Barbie. The makeups are extremely clever in making the skin appear plastic like and fake. I think it would be a good idea to experiment with creating barbies face throgh makeup. It would also relate to what defines perfection and what does not.
Video Reference:
BUTTON!!!!!, P. T. (2012) Invisible - A short Video About Eating Disorders & Society, YouTube. YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-InYmQFDlLA (Accessed: 15 January 2015).
Anorexia nervosa is a mental health condition; it is an eating disorder in which people keep their body weight as low as possible.
This is caused by restricting the amount of food they eat, making themselves vomit and exercising excessively.
Anorexia often develops out of anxiety about body shape and weight that originates from a fear of being fat or a desire to be thin. Many people with anorexia have a distorted image of themselves, perceiving themselves as overweight when in actual fact they are dangerously underweight. This has been said to stem from media and social influences forcing women to compete with beauty. Being slim is often what a majority of women strive for these thoughts can quickly turn into unhealthy obsessions causing self-hate resulting in under eating or starvation in order to achieve a thin body. Anorexia most commonly affects girls and women, although it has become more common in boys and men in recent years. On average, the condition first develops at around the age of 16 to 17 which suggests that this is the typical age where anxiety about body image starts.
Anorexia
Star Models, a modeling agency based in Brazil, has released a graphic new anti-anorexia ad campaign, using Photoshop to turn models into life-size fashion illustrations.
The ads, which run with the tag line 'Say no to anorexia,' show a fashion illustration with typically exaggerated proportions next to a model wearing the same outfit - and the same measurements.
While the models have been airbrushed to mimic the unrealistic illustrations, the ad pleads to young women: 'You are not a sketch.'
Alternatively however these advertisements have also been said to be provoking women to look to these images for thinspiration.
Images Reference: Reporter, D. M. (2013) ‘Powerful anti-anorexia ad campaign tells women “you are not a sketch” using models with fashion illustration proportions’, Daily Mail, 19 April. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2311770/Powerful-anti-anorexia-ad-campaign-tells-women-sketch-using-models-fashion-illustration-proportions.html (Accessed: 1 February 2015).
The image above is of Ana Carolina Reston who was a Brazilian model who died of anorexia in November of 2006 at the age of twenty-one.
After winning a small beauty contest in her hometown of Jundai she began to model and her career took off.
Some could argue that there is nothing she wouldn’t do for her career to be successful, and many speculate this is how her weight loss spiraled out of control. For Reston, looking thin and achieving an ideal body type was a small price to pay to be successful. She died November 15, 2006 after kidney failure due to anorexia. She was 5’8” and weighed 88 lbs.
The author of the campaign is famous Italian photographer Oliviero Toscani, for the talian fashion brand Nolita. The campaign is destined to young women in Italy who keep up with fashion and is called to draw public attention to such awful disease as anorexia.
The ads, which are aimed at raising awareness about eating disorders, feature Isabelle Caro, a French woman, who had battled the disease for more than 15 years, shows her exposed breasts and frail, naked body. She had said that she was decided to show her body for people to know and to see how the disease impacts the body.
The advertising campaign is considered to be controversial because there are people who think the photo is too crude. Unfortunately Caro died on 17 November 2010 in France from the illness aged just 28 years old.
Martin Stadhammar is the creative director of the Anorexi/Bulimi-contact society. The film shows the scene above where a normal girl checks her face, thighs and arms with a disapproving sigh in the mirror while the camera pans out to reveal the bony backside of an anorexic and her distorted view of herself. The advertisement shows that many women have much different views of themselves compared to what everybody else sees.
Photo reference for all three images above: Vega, N. (2011) ‘10 Most Shocking Anti-Anorexia Campaigns (anorexia campaign)’. Oddee. Available at: http://www.oddee.com/item_97738.aspx (Accessed: 16 February 2015).