BY Sarah Ruiz
Online Editor
When I heard about the Radical Beauty art exhibit and its call for art submissions, I knew I wanted to do something, but was lost about where to begin.
I knew I personally had struggled with a negative body image, but that was just me. Would anyone else care?
Then, when I thought about my friends, I realized I wasn’t alone. Thinking of all the times I’d heard, “Man, I don’t feel pretty today,” and backhand comments about weight that my friends had said about themselves, I realized I wasn’t the only one who looked in the mirror and didn’t always love what I saw.
When I really thought about it, I wondered why I had such a hard time loving who I was and the way I looked.
Where had I run into this internalized hatred for the curves I had or the way my left eye is always smaller than my right when I smile? I wasn’t perfect, and instead of thinking I was unique, I thought I was wrong.
I would honestly be shocked if I met someone who told me they had never been unhappy with their appearance. I know men who have wanted to be buffer, women who have wanted to be thinner, and every wish in between.
That’s when I decided what I wanted to do for the Radical Beauty exhibit. I know that most of our ideas of beauty trickle down into our everyday lives from the media.
Magazines filled with tanned, airbrushed models and TV shows with actors whose every hair is right in place, all have played a part in our perceptions of beauty.
I headed to Fred Meyer, and spent a solid half an hour flipping through magazines. I was so engrossed in these pages that one woman asked if I was in charge of the magazines, responsible for their distribution and organization.
When I told her no, I had an art project, she smiled and went searching for her particular magazine. When I left, I had over six magazines in my cart, all ready to be torn apart and analyzed.
Setting all the magazines out, I saw a clear connection. Even the magazines that claim to be feminist and to empower females were all trying to tell us how we could improve.
The pages were filled with claims on how to lose weight, get your best hairless skin, attract the most men, gain more sex appeal or how to do your makeup.
I began feverishly tearing out headlines, models, labels, products and everything that had gotten in my head and told me I needed to change something.
After I had made a collage, I gathered the most beautiful women I know. Girls who don’t shave their armpits, girls who don’t wear makeup, girls who have real curves and girls who wear religious clothing instead of “summer’s hottest clothes.”
I found real girls, people you see when you walk across campus, girls you see next door and know from your families.
I asked them to let me photograph them just as they are – beautiful. They stood against a black background, and I took their portraits in black and white.
I attached all four portraits to a poster board, and placed the bright, colorful headlines of the magazines in the middle of the portraits.
Everyone I know has been victim to not feeling good enough. Our voices are squashed by what society deems normal, so when we stand out or don’t fit that idea, we’re not acceptable.
My project is currently hanging in the SURC next to a beautifully designed exhibit and some truly exceptional art submissions from other students.
Walking through the exhibit provides a unique look into challenging these ideas of beauty we have all been fed.
The exhibit ends today, but I’m sure the impact it had on anyone who walked through will last much longer.
If you didn’t make it to the exhibit, I will clue you into a secret: Real beauty is all around you.
To get the same message, notice we are all different and unique people. It may be hard, but pull up any insecurity you’ve ever had, think of every day you changed your outfit because you felt fat.
Then take a look around you and realize that real people are all different. Humans are beautiful inside and out.
Everything about you is a wonderful piece of a puzzle that makes up a larger picture, and a breathtaking one at that.
