in googling myself, I discovered an anti-beauty-myth article using one of my photos as illustration. I am SO INSPIRED right now. It's in Spanish so I used babelfish to translate, and I love the way certain lines were translated:

Where it is left the diversity? As it is the place of intelligence, the tenderness, picardia, the force of the powerful character of the Venezuelan woman? To be "pretty", according to the criterion of our country, implies to extirpate the individuality, the weight I specify of our defects and virtues, that ineffable personal brightness that us makes only? I do not create it, I do not admit it, I resist to that idea.

---

The Prison's Stereotype

A few months ago, in connection with an exhibition on image advertising to be held at the University where I licencie, I was wondering how far Western women were still not locked in the male imagination. The bars, like all of this world that have disappeared clear profiles of the perpetrators, were symbolic, invisible, and thus more difficult to pinpoint. A prison surrounded by images blatantly false, and esteotipos filled with small samples of pure aesthetic bias. The idealization of women within the framework of an idea of perfection impossible and painful.

Uhmmmm ... that feeling of being completely inadequate in the midst of a general value.

I was further proof of this axiom, an occasion that expected by the subway from my city. Next to me, two women discussed aloud. One was very young - a teenager about 16 years - and the other, much larger, so assumed it would be the mother of the first. A little avergonzanda, I hastened to pretend we did not pay attention to their discussion, but of course, despite the desentendida and make me concentrate on the color of my shoes, I heard very clearly every word.


All relate to the conflict seemed kilos of more than exhibía girl younger. I must say, that I felt that his normal frame, perhaps a little out of shape physically. However, he called the Mother aloud their "thickness" señalandole with great cruelty "rolls of fat" that he dibujaban on trabilla of tight jeans that the girl was carrying. This last inclined his head, obviously dolida malsonantes by criticism that it should also bear in public. Incomoda and deeply disappointed, I walked away a few steps, while the woman continued shouting furious, requiring "being nice".

It is a shame to see that people are governed under criteria such absurdities as fat, slenderness, the color of hair or that the abstract concept of "beauty" that the Venezuelan appears to apply fairly lightly. An absurd autocracy of a pluralistic perspective, with hundreds of meanings and connotations as is the aesthetic personnel. Why must women adjust to a Platonic idea, born of a glorification of the male libido to feel validated in the value of our fisonomia? There is a national obsession by the slenderness of a search advertising, a sense of aesthetics totally false. As fotografa, I know every face and slim figure we see in an ad has gone through a series of touch-ups, ranging from delineate the factions, hide imperfections, stylizing the torsos, soften the footprints of years and old age in the body. The utopia of a pattern schematic that does no more than repeat the mistakes of a complex society clutched a nonexistent aesthetics.

Where is the diversity? What is the place of intelligence, gentleness, picardía, the strength of the powerful nature of the Venezuelan woman? Does being "pretty", according to the criterion of our country, involves removing individuality, the specific weight of our faults and virtues, such ineffable brightness staff that makes us unique?

I do not think so, not admit, I refuse to that idea.

Finally, the Metro came and I got the wagon echandole a last look at the mother and daughter. The girl with her head ladeada, watched a poster of a model where an alcoholic beverage exhibía their vertiginous curves with pride. The mother, her face tense, gesticulating continued. I felt a tremendous sadness, helplessness without a name, to think that women's self-esteem Venezuelan this subject in a manner as to the stiff plastic smile of an image unreal and processed under a concept of beauty cruel and destructive.

I refuse to accept this. In fact, rejection abdominally beauty of this scalpel and plastic. A battle blindly, of course, in a country determined to create a myth about the beauty of its women. But that does not matter to me really. The value of Venezuelan women transcends this two-dimensional image of itself, such that the surface creation and minimize acorrarla tries, but unable ever.

Unique, beautiful, unrepeatable. This is femininity in my country, and no one, even those sad aesthetic theorists who try to corner the curves and beautiful imperfections to create a single mold, it will never achieve change that thinking. -- Deirge

---

What is even more amazing? This particular photo has been stolen and desecrated TWICE by people attempting to show off their 'photoshop skills' at skinnifying me (I reported them for copyright theft and had the images removed from dA). There is some serious power in it, to provoke such reactions. I'm... gloriously stunned at the power of simple belief in the beauty of variety.