Being You
Anqi Li
The article author retains sole copyright to this article.
Copyright 2014 by Anqi Li of “Being You”.
May, 2014
Abstract:
Cosmetics are a necessity in many women’s daily life. Women’s beauty is usually presented as a result of makeup in advertisements, photographs and films, but the process of getting beautiful is mysterious. In the field of fine arts, there are also many artworks depicting attractive appearances. However, the process of makeup is rarely mentioned.
The cosmetic products include a wide range of items. They are portable, convenient, and as seductive as the young ladies who use them. In The Second Sex (1953), Part One, Formative Years, Chapter I, Childhood, Simon de Beauvoir claims that “one is not born, but rather becomes, woman” (283). Cosmetic products highlight and accelerate that “becoming” transition.
My works, which deal with beauty and cosmetic products, draw upon the disequilibrium between the unattainable ideal of beauty created by the consuming society and people’s serious desire of having flawless face. The performances of applying the makeup tools embody my self-contradictory attitudes towards makeup – eager to get beautiful through makeup versus disgust at catering to the mainstream beauty criteria.
The purpose of the thesis is exploring the body, as an object, and as a process with living meanings. The thesis work consists of cosmetic tools and videos. They break down the romanticism created by the beauty industry, and highlight the fruitless endeavor of makeup and the absurdity of modern life.
Chapter I
Cosmetic and Me, A Back Story
I am a girl without a good look and with strong inferiority complex. Having education in traditional school in China, I was not allowed to wear makeup until I went to college. But the desire of beauty becomes more prominent when I try to suppress it. My curiosity drives me to explore the beauty subject which is related to cosmetics.
The whole makeup industry propagandizes the quick gratification of the products and promise beauty. In other words, they are selling magic. Their marketing strategy does not only deceive with visuals, but creates a magical picture through language.
When I consume makeup products, I am also consuming a bunch of vocabularies. These descriptions of cosmetic products always catch me unprepared. However, I am in a trust crisis towards slogans of makeup products.
During the time of the Great Leap Forward in China, there were eye-catching slogans on posters propagandizing the rapid development of agriculture and industry, such as “Much courage, much productivity”. However, the reality was famine and devastation. Although the terrible events took place several decades ago, they are still making impact on the generations after that. Once I encounter a slogan, my first response is suspicion, such as “Take time out of beauty”, “The beauty is not luxurious imagination”, or “Kiss your thin lips goodbye!” I firmly believe that they are too good to be true. Slogan is losing its magic and credibility, and I prefer to place myself in a non-magical land, in which I feel safe.
- Youth Pressed-powder
I recreate this pre-given pressed-powder case. The word “Youth” is a common vocabulary in the beauty industry. They attempt to create the romanticism for customers. However, the dark side of this positivity is the inevitability of aging. The body is consuming the makeup day by day, the body is also depleting the limited youth in one’s life.
Chapter II
The Disequilibrium
My works include the makeup tools and the performances of applying them. The makeup tools I create, such as the big mascara brush and the long lipstick imply the exaggeration of the beauty norm today and my strong desire of being a “beauty”. Before being used, they are clean, shiny and seductive, but after being used, they are dirty, messy and broken. The transition of the makeup tools indicates the fragility of beauty on the body.
In the essay What Is Beautiful Is Good (1972), Karen Dion’s research on personality and social psychology shows that, “Physically attractive individuals were rated as having more socially desirable personalities and were expected to have greater personal success on most of the life outcome dimensions”(285). It is easier to have a beautiful life if I have beautiful face.
If I become more beautiful, can I get more acceptance and love? Am I willing to be an automaton under the modern criteria of beauty through denying my body? I, like many women, long to have beautiful face, but my imperfect appearance is challenged by the harsh but conventional standard of beauty today. I trap myself and keep putting makeup on and on in this little bathroom, which is my refuge and my prison.
- Enchanted Pixel Pressed-powder
I create the Enchanted Pixel Pressed-powder. I change the interior with a smaller mirror, smaller powder plate and smaller sponge. Instead of erasing the flaws instantly, it takes a much longer time to cover my face and it fails to give me an even skin tone.
This work informed me to explore the disequilibrium between the unattainable ideal of beauty created by the consuming society and people’s serious desire of flawless appearance.
- Golden Sexy Kitty Lipstick
The Golden Sexy Kitty Lipstick indicates the attractiveness of cosmetics. The seductive ideal of beauty fascinates many people so that they even forget that the ideal is as unachievable as the Tower of Babel.
In the performance, I try to apply the lipstick with a daily normal gesture,
But the length of it exaggerates my gesture and twists my facial expression in a dramatic way.
At the end, I lose control of it and fail to get a good look.
In this piece of work, people will associate cosmetics with sexual desire. I agree with that, but what I will argue is, cosmetics are also related to the need of belonging. Cosmetics, which are similar with jewelry, enable us to highlight our identity, position and membership with the outer world. Today, the action of makeup is a social activity, or a prelude of social activity.
- Naked Cover Foundation Roller
In the work named Naked Cover, I use concealer as foundation to cover my face. I use the form of slogan to describe my work: Applying concealer as foundation, Applying foundation as concealer, her whole face is a mistake. Foundation, the foundation of everything. In my opinion, there is a good name for foundation (makeup), which is Foundation. It is not only the base for other makeup, but also the base for other things and relationships, such as charm, love, fame and power. If I have a good foundation, I can build my life upon it.
The tool to apply it is a roller which is made out of a pre-made concealer brush and a piece of fabric from a foundation puff.
In the bathroom, I roll the foundation on my face with a thick layer. I would like to believe the foundation is a light mask, I put it on, I hide myself, I perform as another person, and I expose another layer of myself.
And I would like to believe the foundation is a wall as well, standing between me and the audience. I perform as if there is nobody watching. I correct my face by negating every corner of it, just like a painter negates the previous surface of the walls. It is a ritual of rebirth happening in a bathroom.
The cosmetic industry frequently applies Photoshop and other digital effects to advertise the magical effects of the products. It is the virtual techniques that support the actual business. However, both foundation and concealer are tangible and visible materials. In the video of rolling it on my face, I throw the romanticism created by the beauty industry back to the land of mundane. As viewers, we are witnessing the retouching of a person’s face without retouching by digital effects.
In Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory (1988), Judith Butler discusses the body in the context of lived experience. Quoting Merleau-Ponty’s theory of phenomenology, she write, “ In Merleau-Ponty’s reflections in The Phenomenology of Perception on ‘the body in its sexual being,’ he takes issue with Such account of bodily experience and claims that the body is ‘an historical idea’ rather than ‘a natural species’…the body comes to bear cultural meanings"(416). In my opinion, the body, not only perceives the culture, but also rethinks the culture.
Although the aesthetic norm is cultural-specific, the contemporary aesthetical criteria for females are highly defined by fashion and pop culture. For me, I have been told that what is natural is beautiful, but today, when many Asian women pursue bigger eyes and higher-arched nose by cosmetics tricks and plastic surgeries, what is natural is suspect.
- Perfect Curve Mascara Brush
As an Asian with short eyelashes, I am always curious whether someone can open his or her eyes easily if he or she has long eyelashes.
This question, which sounds absurd, inspires me to consider the lightness of real eyelashes and the heaviness of the false ones in my work. Thus, I create a big mascara brush out of feathers.
Undoubtedly, the performances involve the issue of privacy and intimacy. It is assumed that cosmetics are always put on in a relatively private space, such as a bathroom, since the moment of makeup is critical for the transition from a private-self to a public-self. The tension rises when the performances are exposed. I bare my “private-self” to the public,
But simultaneously, I am masking myself with cosmetics. It is, and it is not an intimate interaction between performer and audience. Here, the function of the cosmetic products goes beyond physical beatification to sentimental self-protection.
Additionally, it is related to voyeurism to bring the performance into the public. When watching them, audiences’ curiosity and shame burst out together. Putting cosmetics on can be as revealing as stripping cloth off. In my work, I expect the spectators can experience the conflicts between themselves and the performance, which is similar with my curiosity and embarrassment when I encounter cosmetic products for the first time. Thus, it is my self-conscious choice to expose my body.
The pure white feather gets contaminated during the application. For getting beauty, I have to sacrifice something I have.
- Monroe Monroe Blush Puffs
The name of this work is from Marilyn Monroe, whose name is always linked to attractiveness and sexuality. Many men have a fascination with women’s breasts, and especially the size. Undoubtedly, cosmetics come with sexual significance. I am eager to know how it feels if my head lingers between such big breasts. So I create a pair of boob-like blush puffs, so that I have a legitimate reason to experience it.
It must be as fantastic as the illusion created by cosmetic commercial.
However, when applying blush, I feel they make me stifled. They take my breath away. They are too big for me. They are too good to be true for me. I feel absurd, awkward and disappointed at the same time.
Makeup involves expectations and desire of the body, and also embodies imperfection of and dissatisfaction with the body. During the performance, I put blush on and on, my face gets pink and my hair gets grey. When the blush is put on, what is supposed to put on is youth, what is fading out is also youth. Makeup can stay on the face for one day, but beauty can never stay on the face forever
Fundamentally, the endeavor of becoming beautiful is fruitless. Makeup can last one day, and at the end of the day, we wash it away and go back to the original point. No, it is not the original point. It is even worse, since we are older than we were yesterday. This work indicates that many people’s expectations of makeup will end up in disappointment, which is similar with my illusion of big breasts.
- 24H Kiss Lip Balm
If the Sleeping Beauty doesn’t have the peerless beauty, now she might be still sleeping, like a numb mannequin. I sympathize with the mannequin head.
Every day, in the bathroom, I apply it, I kiss it. Looking at the pouting lips, I think, she needs a lot of kisses; she needs a lot of love. There are never ever enough kisses for her. The more she gets, the more she wants, even she would be depleted in kissing.
For me, I was born in a country where people in general are not candid over sexual matters, but now I am living in a country where people have experienced the feminist movements and the sexual liberation. Both of them, the constriction and the liberation of the body swing me between losing and gaining my identity. I am a fall out product in these two forces of culture. I am an automaton without facial features. Through kissing the mannequin head, which can be regarded as an extension of my body, I kiss my lack of belongingness, and depleting it with my passion.
- Forever Sharp Eyeliner
In 2012, Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics published a research on eye cosmetic usage and associated ocular comfort done by Alison Ng, an optometry and vision scientist. The research shows that, “The use of multiply eye cosmetics is extensive and associated with the perception of ocular discomfort” (501).
In Phenomenology of Perception (2002), Chapter 4, Merleau-Ponty uses the example of a blind man’s stick to explain that “the pressures on the hand and the stick are no longer given; the stick is no longer an object perceived by the blind man, but an instrument with which he perceives. It is a bodily auxiliary, an extension of the bodily synthesis” (176). For me, I also had painful experience of using eye cosmetics, especially eyeliner. In this work, I reference the physical discomfort caused by cosmetic products and the trauma caused by cosmetic surgeries. It also, implies the invisible violence from the ideal beauty.
In the performance of using the blade eyeliner, which is made out of charcoal, I explore the audience’s perception and my own perception about cosmetics. Merleau-Ponty uses the example of a blind man’s stick to explain how the stick not only an object perceived by the blind man, but an instrument with which he perceives. It is an extension of the body. For the audience, they watch the film with their knowledge and experience about knife and pain, so the discomfort caused by eyeliner can be perceived. For me, I am not only experience the world with my body, but also with my makeup. More specifically, the cosmetic tools I create, which are different from the conventional ones, enable me to experience the world and interact with others in another way.
- Always Touching Eyebrow Pencil
Similar with the work of Monroe Monroe Blush Puffs, the application of violin bow for my eyebrows is bittersweet.
In the video, I dress up and begin to play the cosmetics, and the domestic scene becomes a public performing stage. The viewers watch me as if they watch it through a two way mirror. I am indulged in applying it, without knowing I am gazed at by others. In this performance, my body becomes the musician and the instrument at the same time. I AM my work. By my delirious performance, I interpret the invisible pressure of the ideal beauty into visible effects on my face, and concretize many people’s madness for chasing the ideal.
Chapter III
The Methodology
- The Video
I agree with Albert Camus. In Chapter I, An Absurd Reasoning, The Myth of Sisyphus (1955), Camus declares that, “Much of our life is built on the hope for tomorrow yet tomorrow brings us closer to death and is the ultimate enemy; people live as if they didn't know about the certainty of death”(13).
In terms of makeup, there is also disequilibrium between the serious desire of being perfect and the unachievable ideal. It is the gap between them runs the beauty industry. The serious business relies on the absurdity of vanity. In my opinion, makeup is an allegory, embodying the absurdity of life in an unreasonable world.
In this sense, videotaping becomes a critical working method in my work.
Generally, we believe that video can represent what was happening, both for my performances and cosmetic commercials. However, the truth you believe in the video can be fictitious, and the fiction in it can be the truth. The absurdity emerges when we fail to distinguish truth from falsehood. Part of it is because we are living in a world filled with hyperreal images and videos. At the end, there can be no boundary between truth and falsehood. And I can declare that the super model in the graphic advertisement and the girl performing in the bathroom are the same person. There is no truth, but the puzzle of truth.
In my work, I explore the relationship between the body and the space. In Phenomenology of Perception (2002), Chapter 4, Merleau-Ponty points out the relationship between the body and the space, “to be a body, is to be tied to a certain world, as we have seen; our body is not primarily in space: it is of it” (171). In my work, I highlight the relationship between the body and the space. The body as a special existence is an inseparable part of space. As such, the commercial society with beauty industry is also a space, which reproduces the female body to some extent.
Our bodies are influenced, changed and even penetrated by it.
The domestic space, as a specific place, is always associated with feminine. It is also a place for the reproduction of female body. Putting makeup on, many women involve into this activity voluntarily or unconsciously.
In my work, I emphasize this reciprocal relationship between the space and the body, by placing the body on a typical interior environment. But at the same time, I create the conflicts between them, through the unconventional actions of the body.
Additionally, I highlight the conflicts by shooting the performer directly and steadily with a camera, instead of portable devices, such as iPhone. Although it is easy to capture the performer’s unprepared state by portable devices, I prefer to reinforce the unprepared state from the spectators. Thus, the makeup mirror becomes the lens of the camera.
The performances of applying the makeup tools and the deemed failure of the applications reveal the gap between the expectation and the imperfection of the body. Therefore, my works can be regarded as an introspection of the normalized beauty. Even though it is obvious that the makeup tools I create will not retouch my appearance in a conventional way, the moment of meditation is important to me. It is important to many other people as well.
- The Pre-made Material
The pre-made cosmetic materials are frequently used in my work. Firstly, they reference the quality of my work by setting up the context of modern cosmetic usage. Secondly, pre-given material is another kind of raw material for an artist to create something else, which combines the original character of the pre-given material and artist’s concept. In my work, the pre-given cosmetic materials are always in a dynamic process. They change the body, and they are changed by the body. In this sense, I agree with Joseph Beuys’s theory of social sculpture, In Beuys’s statement (1973), he claims that, “Everyone is an artist. This is why the nature of my sculpture is not fixed and finished. Process continues in most of them: chemical reactions, fermentation changes, decay, drying up. Everything is in a state of changing”.
The ruined cosmetics are a remnant of the past.
The decay of these cosmetics is a concrete reminder of the passage of the effort on the beauty.
Gazing at these remains, the future of the mundane body is predictable.
We can make up our face, our body, but we can never make up the ungraspable time. There is the anxiety of death behind the wallpaper of cosmetics.
Conclusion
By my work, including cosmetic tools and performances, I reveal how un-romantic cosmetics can be, and how absurd our modern life can be. In addition, I articulate my relationship with “beauty”, by rethinking my identity and personal history. In one word, cosmetics are a vehicle for me to express my understanding of human body.
Something is always something else. It is such a complicated and bizarre world.
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Endnotes
1. Beauvoir, Simone De. The Second Sex. New York: Knopf, 1953
2. Liu, Xirui. “Much Courage, Much Productivity.” Daily Report [Beijing] 27 Aug. 1958.
3. Gaille, Brandon. “35 Catchy Beauty Slogans and Great Taglines - BrandonGaille.com.” BrandonGaillecom. Brandon Gaille, 10 July 2013. Web. 16 May 2014. http://brandongaille.com/35-catchy-beauty-slogans-and-great-taglines/
4. Wikipedia contributors. “Tower of Babel.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 2 May. 2014. Web. 17 May. 2014. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Babel.
5. Dion, Karen, Ellen Berscheid, and Elaine Walster. “What Is Beautiful Is Good.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 24.3 (1972): 285-90.
6. Butler, Judith. “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory.” Theatre Journal 40.4 (1988): 519
7. Ng, Alison, Katharine Evans, Rachel North, and Christine Purslow. “Eye Cosmetic Usage and Associated Ocular Comfort.” Ophthalmic and Physiological Optics 32.6 (2012): 501-07.
8. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge, 2002.
9. Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays. New York: Vintage, 1955.
10. Wikipedia contributors. “Hyperreality.” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 12 May. 2014. Web. 19 May. 2014.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality
11. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge, 2002.
12. Beuys, Joseph, statement dated 1973, first published in English in Caroline Tisdall: Art into Society, Society into Art in 1974, and collected by Stiles, Kristine, and Peter Selz. Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art: A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings. Berkeley: U of California, 1996.
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