After seeing this poster and reading the essay with similar themes posted above, I wanted to respond to this example of an anarchist perspective on beauty. The poster and essay focus on themes that we discussed in class, such as beauty, feminine physical ideals and the way our understanding of those concepts affects how we see and present ourselves to the world. Professor Halberstram mentioned in class that the most blatant example of the asymmetrical formation of masculinity and femininity is that men attempt to build bodies while women attempt to reduce them...the quote at the opening of the essay "a woman can never be too rich or too thin" reflects that idea in femininity.
But where do our conditioned desires to reach a certain ideal figure come from? Our aesthetic and desire for beauty. The poster and essay comment on the concept of beauty and ideals as we maintain them currently and reflect on the fact that we hold ideals that are literally unattainable. This is the crux of the issue that can be extrapolated to all the various self esteem and confidence issues among others that people deal with everyday. We are taught to compare and rank and compete with others in the arena of beauty, for a competition that can never be won.
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