More to Love

As mentioned in a previous blog, the First Place winner the Freelance/Agency Issue Reporting Picture Story category was a project entitled "Love Me." Somehow, I stumbled across Zed Nelson's larger essay in Issue 8 of Visura Magazine. The fuller project is even better.

Left caption: Jackeline Padilha, 22. Bikini wax. J. Sister’s waxing salon. New York, USA.
Right caption: “We live, as Naomi Wolf once observed, in a surgical age. Everybody’s doing it. Soon, the only people who won’t have any kind of cosmetic surgery will be the poor. Money will be the last barrier to the scalpel when allothers – gender, ideology, morals, politics – have gone.” Maureen Rice, writer. Ox and Angela, plastic surgeon and wife. Rio, Brazil.

 
Nelson's statement regarding the project:

Beauty is a $160 billion-a-year global industry. The worldwide pursuit of body improvement has become a new religion.

We live in a society that celebrates and iconises youth, where the old, the aesthetically average and the fat seem to have been erased from the pages of our glossy magazines, advertising posters and television screens.

Left caption: “Men’s Health magazine (USA) hasn‘t had a hairy chest on it’s cover since 1995.” Wall Street Journal. Copacabana Beach. Rio, Brazil.
Right caption: “I’m competing with men 20 years younger than me.” Anthony Mascolo, 46. Liposuction to chin and abdomen. New Jersey, USA.

The promise of bodily improvement is fuelled by advertising campaigns and a commercially-driven Western media, reflecting an increasingly narrow palette of beauty. The modern Caucasian beauty ideal has been packaged and exported globally, and just as surgical operations to 'Westernise' oriental eyes have become increasingly popular, so the beauty standard has become increasingly prescriptive. In Africa the use of skin-lightening and hair-straightening products is widespread. In South America women have operations that bring them eerily close to the Barbie doll ideal, and blonde-haired models grace the covers of most magazines. Anorexia is on the increase in Japan, and in China, beauty pageants, once banned as 'spiritual pollution', are now held across the country.

Left caption: In August 1993, a 21-year-old woman from Soweto was named Miss South Africa, becoming the first black woman to win the title in the 37-year history of the pageant. Finalist. Miss South Africa Competition. Sun City, South Africa.
Right caption: "One thing we do know for certain is that the body is the place where each of us lives, and the place where each of us will die: our body will always, in the end, betray us." Tim Adams, writer. Sally Walker, age undisclosed. Cosmetic Enhancement Expo, Dallas, Texas.

'Westernising' the human body has become a new form of globalisation, with 'Beauty' becoming a homogenous brand. The more rigorously our vision is trained to appreciate the artificial, the more industries benefit. The current standard of beauty feeds the fashion, cosmetics, diet, medical and entertainment industries, with the homogenisation of appearance becoming part of an increasingly globalised consumer culture.

But who creates this culture? However much we may confidently point the finger at certain industries, we can't deny our own tacit, albeit culturally conditioned, involvement. Like it or not, we are judged, and judge, by appearance. Perhaps we are obsessed with the way our own bodies look because we know how instinctively judgemental we are of the bodies that we look at.

Left caption: “To be honest I never thought that I needed it. But I read about the procedure in a magazine.” Joany Macias, 33. Post ‘designer vaginal rejuvenation’ surgery. Los Angeles, USA.
Right caption: Billboard. Dakar, Senegal.

A recent scientific study reported that we make decisions about the attractiveness of people we meet in the space of 150 milliseconds. This superficial appraisal has profound implications. Those we consider most beautiful not only find sexual partners more readily but studies also show they get better jobs and more lenient treatment in court.

We have created a world in which there are enormous social, psychological and economic rewards and penalties attached to the way we look. Can any of us honestly say, 'I don't want to be attractive'? Don't we all want to be loved? But have we been brainwashed into believing that in order to be loved we need smaller noses, bigger breasts, tighter skin, longer legs, flatter stomachs and to appear ever youthful? Where does it end?

Left caption: “I’m resisting being old, of course. I won’t let go. I may die, but I’ll die with no wrinkles.” Maria Jose-Silva, 71. Facelift, neck lift, breast augmentation. Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Right caption: Barbara Mulkerrins, 42. Eyelid surgery and breast augmentation. Bodyline cosmetic surgery resort. Phuket, Thailand.

The body has, in a sense, become just another consumer purchase. Everyone can, in the spirit of our age, go shopping for bodily transformation. Banks now offer loans for plastic surgery. American families with annual incomes under $25,000 account for 30 per cent of all cosmetic surgery patients. Americans spend more each year on beauty than they do on education.

As our role models become ever younger and more idealised, we are so afraid of aging that the quest for youthful preservation generates an almost pathological obsession with our bodies. As we align our sense of self-worth with self-image, the psychological and emotional consequences are tortuous. The one thing we do know for certain is that our body will always, in the end, betray us.

Left caption: Recent American studies claim that today it is men, even more than women, who increasingly suffer from anxiety about their bodies. Surveys reveal that 38% of American men want bigger pecs, while only 34% of women want bigger breasts. Ronnie Coleman, 37. Winner. Mr. Olympia Competition. Las Vegas, USA.
Right caption: Abbie Jones, 15. 2nd place. Miss Teen British Isles contestant. Burton, UK.