Final Project - Jenelle Mejia

    My mask is made out of paper, cotton balls, and a paper mache mixture (flour + water). Once I was satisfied with it’s shape, I began painting the mask with my makeup. As a final touch I added two ribbon straps, so I could tie the mask around my head. Of course, I did my hair and makeup before taking any photos.

        High maintenance women are constantly trying to look glamorous. This beauty is temporary because all of the chemicals in the products we use damage our skin and hair. The chemicals in makeup seep into our pores and damage our natural skin barrier. Dying our hair, adding extentsions, and the endless amount of products thin out our hair over time. Most of us will begin to lose hair and resort to wigs at an early age. Glamour girls age fast and quickly resort to Botox. There are truly no limits to what we will do to capture the male gaze.
        The female gaze has changed how I view myself. It puts a spotlight on the reality of womanhood. And, exposes how women actually look and feel. The male gaze demands that women fulfill a fantasy. I’ve had to learn to decenter men and create my own definition of beauty. A lot of the work I’ve done this semester has been made to challenge beauty standards. I’d like to create art that shows how the male gaze affects women. It slowly breaks down our self-esteem and satisfying men becomes second nature. Our interests and feelings get put on the back burner.
        Cindy Sherman has inspired a lot of my artwork this semester. Her portraits challenge the male gaze. I admire her ability to create so many characters and execute them perfectly. In Parul Sehgal’s article “The Ugly Beauty of Cindy Sherman’s Instagram Selfies”, Parul explores Cindy Sherman’s past and explains her creative process. She began creating characters in isolation. These characters became her armour and helped her cope with the madness of New York. Sherman was afraid to walk the streets and found peace in her bedroom. Her identity is very complex, as there is a piece of her in every character. Marilynne Robinson, a writer, describes the women in Cindy’s Portraits, "Their vulnerability pains me — how badly they want to achieve some kind of glamour, how magnificently they miss the mark." (Sehgal, 18). The characters in her portraits are projections of her insecurities.
        In Nicholas Mirzoeff’s book “How to See the World”, Mirzoeff explains how we see ourselves and others. Mirzoeff wrote, “The selfie is a fusion of the self-image, the self-protrait of the artist as a hero, and the machine image of modern art that works as a digital performance.” (Mirzoeff, 31). Everything in life is a performance. Getting dressed, putting on makeup, and styling our hair is all preparation to perform for the world everyday. Selfies and social media help us capture this performance. As photographers of our lives, we decide what the camera gets to document. Mirzoeff also includes art history in his book. He compares selfies to the paintings European royalty got made in the seventeenth century. The king or queen were always painted elegantly. A mirror was included in their portraits. Mirzoeff explains why the mirrors were included, “Whatever you believe, the “mirror” shows something that the spectator would not usually be able to see-either the painting that the artist is working on…or the king and queen standing in front of it” (Mirzoeff, 35). The analogy of “a mirror exposing the truth” inspired my photographs. I want my artwork to expose the truth.

“Majesty does not sleep, get ill, or become old.” (Mirzoeff, 35).

Works Cited

    Mirzoeff, Nicholas. How to See the World: An Introduction to Images, from Self-Portraits to Selfies,

 Maps to Movies, and More. Basic Books, 2016.

    Sehgal, Parul. “The Ugly Beauty of Cindy Sherman’s Instagram Selfies.” The New York Times, The

 New York Times, 5 Oct. 2018, www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/10/05/magazine/instagram-cindy-

sherman-ugly-beauty.html.

PLASTIC