Unmask the Posed

Beauty is heavily marketed to young women through magazines, television, and social media. Multiple movies have scenes where a girl transforms from who she is to a “beautiful”, vamped up women that instantly gets attention just because she put on makeup and changed her clothes. These scenes, the growing influence of social media, and the unrealistic editing in magazines can affect how young women see themselves and can result in negative stigmas around how they view others as well. In today’s society it seems that women’s beauty is for the benefit of the audience and onlookers rather than themselves. Some women are even afraid to leave the house without makeup on because they believe they are ugly without it. There are multiple forms of beauty. I believe that all women are beautiful with and without makeup and that today’s society doesn’t acknowledge the beauty that everyone is born with enough.

In Unmask the Posed, the portraits are displayed as a diptych using the same model to emphasize the idea that people can be beautiful in multiple forms. The images displayed on the left, in the white frames, show the advertised, over the top form of beauty that society is used to seeing in magazines. Through the use of vibrant colors, staged poses, and lack of eye contact we as the viewer can’t relate to the individual. Although we may not be able to relate to the models in these images we can still acknowledge that they are beautiful. The images displayed on the right, in the black frames, display the individual in their relaxed, natural state. Their beauty is shown through their relaxed position, absence of alteration to their appearance, and eye contact. When viewing these portraits the viewer can get a sense of who the model is.