I have been reading so much over the last month but this article in a journal was so relevant that I took extensive notes from it.
The idea of beauty as a process has really helped me link it more clearly to the process of engaging with filters. Thinking of this type of ‘beautification’ reminded me of the idea of dress which I discussed a few months ago.
- “The types of beautification range from the everyday, cosemetic and digital practices which are practiced on a daily basis However, beautification encompasses a much wider range of experience than such analyses would indicate. At the very least, we can distinguish between these everyday practices and those associated with occasions where beauty, rather than being relegated to a kind of necessary backdrop for women’s social existence, becomes highlighted as a goal in and of itself. The experience explored below is an example of such a “special occasion,” and as such it offers an instance where the importance of beauty moves to the forefront, and where women are more likely to perceive the production of their appearance as an aesthetic project rather than as a mere cultural necessity.”
- Debra Gimlin “pursue surgery as a means of bringing their appear- ances in line with their inner self. Claiming that their bodies fail to represent them as the people they truly are, individuals in this group explain their desire for cosmetic surgery with statements such as ‘I don’t feel like an old person. I don’t want to look like one,’ or ‘I exercise and diet. I want to look like I do.’ These candidates, according to John [the surgeon], are adequately prepared for cosmetic surgery, with expectations that will likely be met by the procedures they undergo” (2002,84).
- In her exploration of the beauty salon, Gimlin notes that both stylists and customers view the beautifying process as a nurturing one, wherein women are encouraged to be pampered and emotionally nurtured (2002,1649).
- That lies in whether the participant sees the beautification process as mandatory and to what extent the process is externally driven.
- The male gaze can be biological and social
- Central to my argument concerning feminine beautification is a strong, although not absolute, distinction between process and product. Therefore, it is appropriate that we first turn our attention to the question of the relationship between the beautifying woman as artist- as one who engages in the process of beautification- and the beautified woman as artwork, the end result of that process. What exactly does the process of beautification do to or for the female subject?
- Is beautification, as Bartky claims, an “art of disguise” (Bartky 1990, 71), by which women cover their deficient or defective bodies? Or is beautification more accurately referred to as a means of self-expression or self-transformation?
- In this moment, the beautified woman ceases to be perceived as (and therefore, to a significant degree, ceases to be) a work of art but rather becomes organized as a social tool, something to be used within the context of a very specific and gendered social discourse.
- In contrasting the object of utility with the work of art, Martin Heidegger writes, “the equipmental quality of the equipment consists indeed in its usefulness. But this usefulness itself rests in the abundance of an essential being of the equipment. We call it reliability” (1971,34).
- When the woman chooses to use her own beauty, or to rely upon it for her own sense of self or worth, she risks succumbing to/reducing herself to being little more than the object of male desire and hence eradicating the possibility of her own subjectivity and agency.
- One must consider the creator of these filters and therefor a vision of self. That has not been created by the user – is this an intersubjective process rather like a beauty salon? Cahill, A.J., 2003. Feminist pleasure and feminine beautification. Hypatia, 18(4), pp.42-64.