The secret to flawless skin! Look younger in minutes! Shave off inches! These are the messages that are fed to us in our social media feeds daily. Emphasis on our looks has never been shouted louder. Until very recently, depth had been privileged over the superficial. In recent years, this opposition has changed. Surface is now what matters.
I have created these satirical beauty hacks to highlight the immense pressures that are put onto women to adhere to very narrow beauty ideals. Reducing our age, our size, our ethnicity is asked of us in these incessant daily routines. These hacks are absurd but also in the realms of possibility of what is out there, teaching us that we need to try harder to be beautiful at all times.
Online tutorials and hacks are rife with platitudes of empowerment whilst simultaneously telling us we need to prescribe to certain standards to be accepted. The beauty hacks are a purposeful balance of absurdity and the grotesque. Humour in art is "employed to activate repressed impulses, embody alienation or displacement, disrupt convention, and explore power relations in terms of gender, sexuality, class, taste, or racial and cultural identities." (Higgie, 2007:12). Because of this, humour plays an important role in this series.
Instant Nose Job!!!
Become a Bronzed Goddess!!!!
Bee Stung Lips!!!!!
Instant Face Lift!!!!
Have your cake AND eat it!!!! Insta Live!!!!!
