You're beautiful just the way you are!

Hey folks. A quick hit to remind you/me/us/we that seeing is NOT always believing, especially if it's media trying to sell anything (music, tv, beauty, lifestyle, products, whatever).

I, for one, often forget how much I'm lied to by every advertisement, commercial, billboard, etc. that I see. It's like I become inoculated to the falsity of media surrounding me. Especially when it comes to beauty. We (men and women) are supposed to be flat here, curvy there, blemish free everywhere, toned, no wrinkles, no flab, god forbid we be freckled, blah, blah, blah. It's enough to make me barf.

But I get really scared when I begin to forget that it's messages outside of myself being delivered to me that are telling me these things (even when I remind myself all the time). Instead I begin to feel as if the messages come from within me. My own voice starts to say "You're chunky. Look at that patchy skin! Ooh, look at those wrinkles!" Yadda-yadda, on and on. It's bad for me. It's bad for all of us.

BUT, every once and a while I get a nice kick in the ass to remind me that, uh, nope, I'm just fine the way I am and the world of media is what's way, way, way sick. Case in point: I ran across this website today that reps a company that provides professional photo retouching services. The real mind blower is their portfolio. If you want to be reminded of all the lies we tell each other about what 'beauty' is (aka - attack of the Photoshopper), but also what 'reality' looks like, this is the place to go (but remember that this particular version of 'reality' is supported by entire crews of hair, make-up, costuming, set, and lighting teams in addition to lifestyles likely filled with expensive skin and body 'care' routines). Anyway, go to this website, click Portfolio, select any image, and as you roll your mouse back and forth over the image, you'll see the original and retouched photos. Holy crap. I think it's fair to say that we have some fucked up ideas about beauty. Do you agree?

As a preview, check out this two samples from the site:




























Because apparently even beautiful people need to be 'fixed' and/or 'perfected.' Sad.

To see other examples of media (primarily print, but also some video) that works to make us forget what real beauty looks like, Melissa McEwan over at Shakesville has a series called Impossibly Beautiful.

In the meantime, I feel like I need to continually chant to myself, "I'm beautiful just the way I am. You're beautiful just the way you are. We're beautiful just as we are." Whew... Breath. Repeat.

UPDATE:
I just watched a recent (March 10, 2009) Op-Ed piece in The New York Times video library entitled Sex, Lies and Photoshop. It was put together by the wonderful Jesse Epstein, a Brooklyn-based documentary filmmaker. (I was first introduced to Epstein when her piece 34x25x36 was featured in The YouTube Screening Room, and then I saw her work again as a featured film in this year's LunaFest film festival -- which is still touring, if you wanna go.) Anyway, Epstein's Op-Ed argues in support of possible legislation in France that would make it illegal to promote (through any media, including advertising) negative body image and eating disorders. One central measure would force magazines to disclose the extent to which their images have been retouched or altered. Can you imagine?! Wow-wee! We should keep our eyes on France and see what happens! - 4/6/09

Spring...

Greetings, friends!
Friday marked the calendar end of winter and beginning of a new season. Spring has technically (though perhaps not materially) sprung, and I, for one, welcome the change. Winter offers a stark beauty worthy of awed appreciation and perhaps reverence, but I was built with a temperamental body that struggles in the cold, sometimes making a love of the brisk air and heavy snow difficult. As such, spring is a welcome addition to my days.

I made it through another quarter of graduate school -- a space of mixed blessings. I'm on "Spring Break" which, for me, is a pseudonym for "Catching Up." It'll be a week of cleaning, laundry, bill paying, taxes, answering 3 months worth of email, that sorta stuff. I don't really mind. I feel free, which can be a fleeting feeling. I was reflecting on just that this past Saturday. I was on the sun porch reading, which I often do on Saturday mornings, but this time it was a book of MY choosing that can be begun and completed on MY schedule. And that freedom of choice makes all the difference. That sense of control, even if small, over my own life. In the larger picture, that's a silly sequence of logic. I chose to be a grad student; I chose my classes; I chose to approach my work with a commitment to doing the best I can. So, this 'absence of freedom' is self-subscribed. Even so, the immediate ability to structure my own time, and take pleasure in the small things that I so often choose to overlook because 'I have no time!' is a joy.

This past Saturday was in the mid-50s, a pleasant break from the chill we've been moving through the past five or six months. I decided to take a walk -- a pleasure I can rarely indulge when school's in session. I made my way the 3.5 miles to the Lincoln Park Conservatory, a favorite spot for forgetting the winter cold, swung through the Regenstein African Journey portion of the Lincoln Park Zoo (always free to the public!), made my way to the Lakeshore, and walked the 3 or so miles north along the lake before cutting back west towards home. It was a lovely afternoon and I was free to enjoy the weather and the city and my own space to reflect, to contemplate, and to be inspired but the vastness of beauty that exists in the everyday, but is too easily overlooked as I(we) rush from thing to thing.

For me, when I feel lost and out of control of my own day-to-day living, I'm drawn back to the natural world -- flora, fauna, landscapes -- places that bring me back to myself. I've lived in big cities for the past seven years, and perhaps the most difficult thing about it -- despite all the advantages I gain -- is the distance from nature. So I have to find places that let me reconnect. In Boston, I'd make my way out to the Arnold Arboretum - 265 acres of land where I would often lose myself in the pine forests, stop to sketch or read or take a nap in the sun, far from the sights and sounds of the city. Chicago's different. Similar spaces are far enough away that they're difficult to reach on public transportation. So, here I just look for green, and often find myself on the Lakefront Trail, an 18 mile trail that stretch along Lake Michigan from Hollywood Ave. on the northside to 71st St. on the southside. While I'm in easy sight of the city I can at least hear the birds, smell the lake, and see green. A girl's gotta take what she can get.

In my reflections over the weekend, I started organizing some of my digital photography, pulling out images of flora, enraptured by the rich variation in color, shape, texture, size. Everything of beauty being offered by nature itself. I started working on a number of large collages (roughly two feet square) that perhaps in time I'll see about framing, but I thought I might share one here. It is very much a work in progress, but you get the idea. Most of the images are from the Lincoln Park Conservatory or my mother's garden in northeast Ohio, but I'm working on another one that includes images from the Garfield Park Conservatory, rural Nebraska, Maine, Manhattan, Kyoto, Mexico City, my own neighborhood, and my own backyard. It's good to remember that there is natural beauty everywhere, when I remember to look.

Happy spring!


















(ps - Please don't use this image without permission. That's stealing and makes me sad.)