body image project :: essays research papers

I visited the art gallery this month they are featuring Larry Kirkwood's Body Image Project. The purpose of this exhibit to to help people understand that it's who we are on the inside that makes us beautiful. The first thing I saw when I walked into the gallery was a big piece of cardboard with pictures from magazines and people who visited made comments about them. Overall, everyone who commented stated that beauty that we see in magazines is not real. The people in the magazines send the message that you aren't beautiful if you don't look like them. But in reality beauty is whatever you see it as, not how you look. This exihibit shows that beauty is found in all shapes and sizes, not just one shape and size. As I continued to walk around I saw all different body shapes. Each of them were beautiful in their own way. There was one body of a woman who was 56 years old. Her chest was not that of a 'normal' woman because her breast implants leaked, and left indentations in her chest. There was another woman who had one breast removed and wanted to be a part of this art because she wanted to offer hope to those who are going through breast cancer. After I left the exhibit I went to the artists website, he has pictures of some of the bodies he's casted and why each of them is beautiful. Also on the website he has his mission of this project. He says his mission is to " give you a more honest and healthy view of who we really are physically." As an example of that there is a model who, in the past was bulemic. She still thinks shes fat, but now she has a more realistic view of what she looks like. One man stated that the media is trying to make people feel ugly and disgusting. One of his examples was a few years ago he saw a shampoo commercial on tv. A man was in an elevator and noticed he had a few dandruff flakes on his shoulder.