Beauty In The  Eye Of The Beholder

 

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". This is a quote that I've heard all my life. But now the question is whether my culture has affected my vision of beauty. Originating from Congo I have always been interested in different cultures and what was considered "beautiful" to each culture. In my country your weight counts for your beauty, if you are bigger in size, you are deemed "more attractive". Also skin colour is another element of beauty. The lighter your skin was the more beautiful you are. But growing up here in Ireland the definition is clearly different. Almost everything I've known to be ideal was the opposite here. What is considered "pretty" is tan skin and a slim physique. But this concept changes all the time due to media. What media portrays at a particular time represents beauty. 

My main objective for this project is to depict different cultures perspectives of beauty and to show the vast differences between them. I also want to include through photography how the idea of classic beauty has changed over the years and how certain cultures have entered into others. For example in the states, the curvaceous figure was ideal. When we think hourglass immediately we think Marilyn Monroe.Once high fashion from Europe entered the American culture, the slim figure became ideal. But now because of celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez, Beyonce and Kim Kardashian, the hourglass figure is slowly making its way back into mainstream media. Also the fact that now in Africa, Western features are more attractive. Women buy fake hair and put themselves through almost fatal procedures to lighten their skin in a bid to look like the average white woman or as close to it.

Before I embark this project I will be interviewing a list of people from different countries and ask them what is their idea of beauty, where it comes from, whether it has changed over the past few years and has it changed living here in Ireland. Ideally for this project I would like to take thirty females that are good representations of their country and have them dressed in their native clothing or what they consider to be the ideal woman's wear. The girls will have their photos taken by me in my house in front of a plain backdrop individually and all together at the end. The girls will have their makeup done by a friend of mine who is a professional makeup artist and be styled by a stylist friend of mine. I will be doing this project with a professional camera which will be lent to me by a friend. The project will be done over the course of five months, beginning in November 2013 and ending March 2014. My hopes for this project is to have at least one woman to represent each continent and work inwards moving into the different countries.

The project will be exhibited in book format in an exhibition. The photographs will be labelled with the country they represent and will be organized in alphabetical order. My goal is to highlight different ideas of beauty and how it has changed since the world has become more integrated with each other. I also want to explore whether there is such thing as a generic form of beauty and is there such a thing as the perfect woman, the one everyone finds beautiful, disregarding the culture in which they grew up in.