Posing Beauty
I visited the museum to see the “Posing Beauty” exhibit on Thursday October 3, 2013 and Tuesday October 8, 2013. The atmosphere of the museum was tranquil, and allowed for a freethinking and free-flowing environment to create ideas for the argumentative essay. The title of the artwork I chose is Venus, which is a self-portrait taken in 1994. I was immediately attracted to the piece of artwork because of the position of her body and her nakedness jump out of the portrait. It is not often that curvaceous black women are photographed, let alone naked for anybody to see. I feel extremely close and personal to the image because I am not the socially acceptable model figure. I too have curves and have learned to embrace them despite societies constant reminder that I am not a size 0.
True Beauty Exposed
“Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder,” has been coined …show more content…
throughout history and is still used today. The statement reiterates the common misconception of what personal beauty is and how others rather than the person determine it themselves. African-American women are often objectified as sexual beings and have never fit in the social norm of what women are supposed to look like to the majority, usually men. Black women are typically not photographed, but when they are it is a thinner model. African-American women come in different shades and shapes along with diverse hair textures. The color hue stretches from fair skin to dark skin, shapes range from thin to thick, and textures from kinky to wavy. Black women could easily be defined as their own race because of the multiple combinations and variations they exemplify. Although black women have various ways to express distinctive forms of beauty, society and the media continuously try to objectify them and diminish their confidence.
The media, especially paparazzi take numerous photos of celebrity sightings and try to get the most embarrassing ones. Celebrities stuffing their faces, wearing no make-up, and vacationing in their swimsuits are worth huge sums of money, but posting pictures on social networks and blogs of celebrities posing in magazines and on red carpets reach young girls all over the United States. They began to develop admiration for these women and desire to be just like them. The young girls noticed their flawless skin complexions, slim body frames, and long straight hair. Eventually, young girls began to realize that their skin is a little darker and more uneven than their favorite celebrity, that their thighs are bigger and stomach rounder, and their hair is shorter and kinky. The rhetorical questions begin to arouse. “Why is my hair not long?” “Why can I not fit a size 3?” “Why is my skin so dark? The questions are endless thoughts pondering in the minds of young girls. The negative influence of the media portraying the ideal image of women creates self-esteem issues for girls. Their parents may tell them how beautiful they are and how unique their look is, but that means nothing when their idol does not favor them at all.
Carla Williams’s self-portrait Venus defies the media’s portrayal of women. Venus conveys the image of a curvaceous woman, which is not seen as beautiful in the media. William’s positions Venus for a side view because every angle of her body needed to be seen, and had her pose naked because of the delicate nature of women’s sexuality. She conveyed that women come in different shapes such as curvy and how women can be naked without being objectified as intense sexual beings. Venus posing to the side with an arched back and head turned up to the sky denotes her self-pride and confidence. She is sitting naked in front of a camera and still manages to exemplify self-assurance. Her naked and curvaceous body positioned in a side view in front of the camera is particularly interesting, because the camera lens is referred to in some cases as the male gaze. The male gaze determines the beauty of a woman, which is known as the Gaze Theory. Venus self-portrait again tests the boundaries of social norm. The Gaze Theory supports an idea of the patriarchal society today, but Venus contradicts this belief. She is a bigger than most models, has a different hair texture, and has a fair skin complexion. These characteristics contradict what men would classify and view as beautiful in their eyes. But in reality, why should men be given the power to dictate and allocate the necessary guidelines to being a beautiful woman?
Venus depicts the epiphany of a strong black woman.
Young girls need role models to admire and aid them in making decisions to better their life as well as their self-esteem. Displaying hypervisability, William’s can see how sensual, yet beautiful the body of Venus is. As a piece of artwork, Venus provides young girls with an outlet to begin to embrace their own shapes, and denote their personal beauty. They will acquire the resistance of the media’s portrayal of women, and continue to pass the positive body images through out the African-American culture. Although women can empower one another, they still have to deal with intersectionality, which deals with women encountering multiple and overlapping oppressions. Dr. Beverly Tatum references Audre Lorde when describing various forms of discrimination that women have faced. For example, “ ‘forty-nine-year-old Black lesbian feminist socialist mother of two’, ”(Tatum 108) provides evidence that African-American women can fit into a number of categories that separate them from the socially acceptable idea conveyed by the
media.
African-American women have suffered from many years of oppression and are now fighting back. They are beginning to build programs based on sisterhood and embracing the beauty that each woman has to offer. Poetry, seminars, books, and even institutions like Spelman College can provide young women with the basic foundations to emerge into womanhood and express their beauty in any form they wish to. Whether their expression be through the natural texture of their hair, curve of their hips and thighs, or their skin a coco brown, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the beholder has to be themselves. They will not allow the media or men to define them as having hypersexual behavior or an extra curve in their hip. Women are the holders of their own bodies; therefore they do not need the critique of anyone to tell them they are not beautiful.
Works Cited
Williams, Carla. Venus. Self-portrait, 1994. Posing Beauty Museum.
Tatum, Dr. Beverly Daniel. African Diaspora and the Word: Readings for ADW 111. “The Complexity of Identity: ‘Who Am I?’” copyright 2013. Print.
True Beauty Exposed
“Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder,” has been coined …show more content…
throughout history and is still used today. The statement reiterates the common misconception of what personal beauty is and how others rather than the person determine it themselves. African-American women are often objectified as sexual beings and have never fit in the social norm of what women are supposed to look like to the majority, usually men. Black women are typically not photographed, but when they are it is a thinner model. African-American women come in different shades and shapes along with diverse hair textures. The color hue stretches from fair skin to dark skin, shapes range from thin to thick, and textures from kinky to wavy. Black women could easily be defined as their own race because of the multiple combinations and variations they exemplify. Although black women have various ways to express distinctive forms of beauty, society and the media continuously try to objectify them and diminish their confidence.
The media, especially paparazzi take numerous photos of celebrity sightings and try to get the most embarrassing ones. Celebrities stuffing their faces, wearing no make-up, and vacationing in their swimsuits are worth huge sums of money, but posting pictures on social networks and blogs of celebrities posing in magazines and on red carpets reach young girls all over the United States. They began to develop admiration for these women and desire to be just like them. The young girls noticed their flawless skin complexions, slim body frames, and long straight hair. Eventually, young girls began to realize that their skin is a little darker and more uneven than their favorite celebrity, that their thighs are bigger and stomach rounder, and their hair is shorter and kinky. The rhetorical questions begin to arouse. “Why is my hair not long?” “Why can I not fit a size 3?” “Why is my skin so dark? The questions are endless thoughts pondering in the minds of young girls. The negative influence of the media portraying the ideal image of women creates self-esteem issues for girls. Their parents may tell them how beautiful they are and how unique their look is, but that means nothing when their idol does not favor them at all.
Carla Williams’s self-portrait Venus defies the media’s portrayal of women. Venus conveys the image of a curvaceous woman, which is not seen as beautiful in the media. William’s positions Venus for a side view because every angle of her body needed to be seen, and had her pose naked because of the delicate nature of women’s sexuality. She conveyed that women come in different shapes such as curvy and how women can be naked without being objectified as intense sexual beings. Venus posing to the side with an arched back and head turned up to the sky denotes her self-pride and confidence. She is sitting naked in front of a camera and still manages to exemplify self-assurance. Her naked and curvaceous body positioned in a side view in front of the camera is particularly interesting, because the camera lens is referred to in some cases as the male gaze. The male gaze determines the beauty of a woman, which is known as the Gaze Theory. Venus self-portrait again tests the boundaries of social norm. The Gaze Theory supports an idea of the patriarchal society today, but Venus contradicts this belief. She is a bigger than most models, has a different hair texture, and has a fair skin complexion. These characteristics contradict what men would classify and view as beautiful in their eyes. But in reality, why should men be given the power to dictate and allocate the necessary guidelines to being a beautiful woman?
Venus depicts the epiphany of a strong black woman.
Young girls need role models to admire and aid them in making decisions to better their life as well as their self-esteem. Displaying hypervisability, William’s can see how sensual, yet beautiful the body of Venus is. As a piece of artwork, Venus provides young girls with an outlet to begin to embrace their own shapes, and denote their personal beauty. They will acquire the resistance of the media’s portrayal of women, and continue to pass the positive body images through out the African-American culture. Although women can empower one another, they still have to deal with intersectionality, which deals with women encountering multiple and overlapping oppressions. Dr. Beverly Tatum references Audre Lorde when describing various forms of discrimination that women have faced. For example, “ ‘forty-nine-year-old Black lesbian feminist socialist mother of two’, ”(Tatum 108) provides evidence that African-American women can fit into a number of categories that separate them from the socially acceptable idea conveyed by the
media.
African-American women have suffered from many years of oppression and are now fighting back. They are beginning to build programs based on sisterhood and embracing the beauty that each woman has to offer. Poetry, seminars, books, and even institutions like Spelman College can provide young women with the basic foundations to emerge into womanhood and express their beauty in any form they wish to. Whether their expression be through the natural texture of their hair, curve of their hips and thighs, or their skin a coco brown, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the beholder has to be themselves. They will not allow the media or men to define them as having hypersexual behavior or an extra curve in their hip. Women are the holders of their own bodies; therefore they do not need the critique of anyone to tell them they are not beautiful.
Works Cited
Williams, Carla. Venus. Self-portrait, 1994. Posing Beauty Museum.
Tatum, Dr. Beverly Daniel. African Diaspora and the Word: Readings for ADW 111. “The Complexity of Identity: ‘Who Am I?’” copyright 2013. Print.