The shift from negative to positive

The internet provides a whole other place, world, environment where images are seen, messages are sent and communication occurs. On myspace and bogging websites there are people speaking up about body image. Here we can view a more immediate shift from negatie to positie ideas about body image and beauty.


REVOLUTION OF REAL WOMEN™
This movement is for every one of you who has, in one way or another, been negatively affected by the societal quest for perfection and beauty. Ever felt you weren't thin enough, good enough, athletic, tall, short, curvy, sexy, smart, wealthy, or PERFECT enough?
Ever felt the need to conform to images of beauty that the media portrays as "Real"? We are for every individual who is ready to join a new Revolution for Women who demand to be respected and celebrated for who and what we are -- no matter what.
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Our Bodies Ourselves




http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=56305960

These books and website are devoted to empowering women with information. Here you can get tons of information and see an excerpt from Eve Ensler's "The Vagina Monologues." There is also a commical video by Joy Nash. "I'm fat and it's ok, it doesn't mean I am stupid or ugly or lazy or selfish- IM FAT! Diet and exercise are vital, but if you do those things and you still aren't thin, your life is not over. American needs a new way of thinking" You can check out her myspace page and what she has to say here: http://www.myspace.com/joynash



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I’m Good Enough for Me, recounts one woman’s personal journey to self-acceptance. After years of struggling with her own body-image demons,author McCarley recognized the flaws were not hers. Instead, she realized society’s unrealistic standards of the “ideal” womanly shape and size were unhealthy and unattainable for the average female. Rather than surrender in shame by failing one crazy fad diet after another, McCarley turned the tables and launched a revolutionary new way of thinking about herself. I’m Good Enough for Me! is an inspirational invitation to accept and embrace yourself, regardless of your age, shape, or size, for being uniquely, wonderfully you. Changing your perspective of yourself, your self-worth, and your place in this world is the key to learning how to be good enough for yourself and even better for those you love.



She has a myspace page dedicated to the book. Here you will find music, videos and messages related to the shift in body image. There is one video in particular that I enjoyed viewing, it puts images and text together to help make sense of the negative body image affects on women. It asks questions like: When did it become cool to not like how you look?

We see this unrealistic image of beauty and it causes us to feel so negatively about who we are. It blows my mind that people give into this image and will turn to dangerous, unhealthy, painful, ineffectie solutions.


I wish we could decide for ourselves what is beautiful and go about being so in a healthy natural way. With hopeful, alternative, questioning messages and images on the rise I think we may see a shift. But will it ever stop? It wont stop with out a start, have you started to change your unhealthy negative, self destructive, controlled views or youself? TRY IT -YOU decide what is beautiful,



YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!









Size... does it matter?



SIZE EIGHT?

Try......

Size Ate
One woman's search for the perfect fit. Written and performed by Margaux Laskey directed by Steven Mcelroy. How many of us have thought that things would be better if we could just be the perfect size 8? 10? 12? The perfect ... whatever? Size Ate, chronicles this futile quest for measured perfection and in a unique blend of monologue, poetry, and song illustrates the often opposing internal and external forces that drive us to obsession, addiction, and ultimately, something like self-acceptance and self-love.
Her story starts with a slim fast diet "step mom invites her along, like a trip" that her parents encouraged. She then experienced loosing her hair, stopping her menstrual cycle. In her family it was a competition, her parents were proud.
It is humorous, and that what makes is so relative and accessible to people. The reactions from strangers, the people she is reaching are most important. The goal is for the play to serve as a outreach, a vehicle, a catalyst of change, for people to talk about this. To think about their own issues and how they might be doing this themselves.
"Projections come up throughout the play, many of them are images from the world, advertisements that remind us all the time. When it comes up in the context of the play you think my God she's thin. "- Director
"For me size eight has come to represent a philosophy of life. It's like we are all size eights, it's this infinite size, we are all capable of so much. that's why i like eight you turn it on it's side and it becomes an infinite symbol, we are all capable of anything."- Margaux
People like this! Here are some comments and reactions-
secretunderwhere
I made a blog about this video and your website and a friend I'm not particularly close with messaged me. She told me how she has problems with bulimia and that this video is a step for her to something better. It opened up a dialogue that would never have happened. Thank you for opening eyes and minds, including mine.
stripperemmers
yo come to my middle school in California i have an eating disorder and this looks like it could help me
ksimm0423
wow come to Washington! I am a recovering anorexic and will take all the support i can get. You are doing a wonderful thing!
hm i can't believe i haven't actually commented here... well, your work is fantastic, and so incredibly important, you are really changing people's lives by sharing like this.

gigibranch
love this! great...i love it that you put yourself out there. this is so many of our life story. thank you for your courage.
Marg also has a blog!!! Check out what she has to say and keep updated on Size Ate!

"life is too short to be little. - benjamin disraeli"



Here she comments and posts daily. She has an entire section of posts and links to body image related topics. One in particular that you may recognize is to "love you body". At their website there is lots of information on the topic and suggestions as to what you can do!http://loveyourbody.nowfoundation.org/












Artist: Jenny Saville





Jenny Saville

is a high profile artist. Her paintings are very large in size, her subjects which are usually nude women, often herself, are also huge, massive and bold. Jenny prefers to work from photographs rather than from real models yet the flesh looks so real. Her use of line and composition provides for plenty of movement, illusions and extreme foreshortening. She has been recognized as one of the most thought provoking and technically accomplished talents of her generation.

Many of her paintings confront perceptions of beauty and femininity.

In 1995-96 she did a photographic collaboration series, Closed Contact, with fashion photographer/filmmaker Glen Luchford. This show in particular confronted and challenged conceived notions of feminine beauty. This collusion of the two artists mimicked the collusion of the art and fashion worlds.


After having observed the operations of reconstructive and aesthetic surgery, Saville was eager to express the violence and anesthetized pain of this experience in her own work. The paintings captures the full range of color, tonality and topography of live flesh. Distortions confront and coerce the viewer into an examination of one's own body and ideas of beauty held within.


These images offer a unique experience for the viewer. The discomfort is complicated. It is triggered partly by our sense of what a "normal" female body should look like. In Jenny's painting the body is transformed. It is spread and expanded beyond what is embedded in our minds as beautiful or normal. In a solo show Territories held in 1999, her work again questions societal obsession with an idealized, almost robotic, image of the female form. By portraying these "images of extreme humanness" that are so out of place in an anxious culture obsessed with eternal youth and beauty, Saville confronts the very essence of what it means to have an active mind in a decaying, dying body.


Although her work may be difficult to interpret for viewers, if they pay attention to how the work feels they should not have any trouble unwrapping the meaning and inspiration behind it. Artists have the power and freedom to provide us with images and messages. Jenny Saville is painting images that we do not normally see. Here painting heighten awareness and consciousness. The viewer can not escape the implications of their physical being, they force us into new habits of perception. In this society obsessed with an unrealistic body image, Jenny has made a consistent, credible statement as a contemporary female artist in response.


Resources/Articles:
http://www.gagosian.com/artists/jenny-saville

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