As a firm advocate of defying the beauty and fashion industry’s standards, I was glad to view Courtney Fairweather’s photography exhibition, The Price of Beauty: Docile Bodies. As I researched “docile bodies,” I found a myriad of saddened victims, all of which had the same feelings of despair, loss, anger, hopelessness, and inadequacy. With this, I assumed that the bounds of the exhibition would certainly be filled with people. But it was not. I struggled to comprehend this as I entered the room.
The artworks were just as saddening and inspiring as I expected them to be. There was a sense of rawness within them that could only be understood if you visited the exhibition. In the eyes of the woman from Fairweather’s piece, “Cut on the Dotted Line,” I saw the unspoken pain and pressure of changing her looks to make her face look younger.
Michel Foucault defines a docile body as “one that may be subjected, used, transformed, and improved,” and that this docile body can only be achieved through strict regiment of disciplinary acts. In other words, the body must undergo a certain procedure to achieve the desired look.
This is the way the beauty and anti-aging industry works, where “it seems like a terrible social faux-pas if you’re not young and beautiful,” says Fairweather.
A saddening truth, where people of all ages and genders have and continue to be victimized. We have become subjected to a mere scientific experiment to improve our appearances.
The goal of the exhibition is to become fully aware of the effects of the beauty industry on people, especially those who are seen as “old.”
“I don’t want somebody to cut my face,” says Fairweather.
“I just want to age gracefully without some sort of expectation set upon me.”
So when a fierce 90-year-old woman gave Fairweather permission to be photographed in her underwear, a sort of calming and comfortable effect came upon me. This portrait, “Jean,” is a realistic image of an old woman, and not one with botox injected under her eyes. After looking at it, I said to myself, “This is what I want to look like when I’m older.”
To those in the beauty and anti-aging industry that continuously false advertise what it means to be beautiful, I say, you can continue to commercialize these products and unrealistic ideas of beauty, but there will always be someone like Courtney Fairweather to educate others on what it means to be truly beautiful and happy.
This exhibition was a means of portraying the negative effects of beauty standards, but a hint of light was also conveyed from the models Fairweather photographed that defied those expectations.
And that is true beauty.
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Angelica Babiera, Contributor
Featured image courtesy of Courtney Fairweather
