Body Ideals
2022
research - mental health - social media trends
The hashtag “#bodygoals” has over 10 million posts on Instagram and 116.4 million views on TikTok. Social media heavily conveys a diet and a fitness culture that impacts users’ relationship with their bodies. The promotion of a “healthy lifestyle” feeds a 5 Trillion worth industry that tries to convince people that wellness is a slim-looking ideal they should all strive for. Constructed images of designed bodies shape our beauty standards and set a temporary bar for perfection. These bodies are idealized and religiously put on a pedestal, while being worrying reminders of the instrumentalization of athletic bodies in totalitarian systems. An image of what is considered a “bodygoal” online and an antique sculpture of a Greek athlete are essentially the same thing, except that the first one managed to give the illusion that it isn’t a construction. I wanted to reveal in the physical reality the true nature of these images disguised as human online. To do so, I constructed a nameless superhuman mesmerizing creature to personify the “ideal body”.
The video below presents my critical analysis and its embodied conclusions.
photos: Pauline Lightburne
Essay script
The wellness and fitness industries target mainly young women and convince them that wellness is a slim-looking ideal we should all thrive for. It branches out into different trend that encourage everyone to eat the same things and look the same which tends toward a cultural standardisation.
The wellness and fitness industries target mainly young women and convince them that wellness is a slim-looking ideal we should all thrive for. It branches out into different trend that encourage everyone to eat the same things and look the same which tends toward a cultural standardisation.
The 5 Trillion worth industry created the profitable confusion that images of perfect bodies
can be realistic aesthetics when they should purely be seen as contemplative designed images.
Our societies beauty standards are set by the bodies of famous models and influencers. They are sacralised and seen as ultimate “body goals”. As a result, people compare their
appearance to bodies that are transformed and enhanced with surgery, diets, exercise, Photoshop, makeup and poses.
These images surround us all the time as advertising tool using people’s insecurities to sell them the illusion that they might look like the model if they buy the product.
These images create the beliefs that the bodies they show are realistic and that we can work
towards resembling them.
My intervention aimed at stripping the image from its fake look of realness and showing the unreachability of these ideals.
I wanted to create a surreal beautiful body that would be a futuristic and dreamy representation of our society’s ideal bodies. I covered my younger sister’s body with reflective facets which turned her in a mesmerizing mirror-skinned creature.
To operate a deconstruction of the unattainable ideal, I brought it to the real world for it to see that it is in fact an artificially improved human. The model’s perfection isn’t natural but the result of a meticulous work.
I aimed to shift the perception of the ideal: as it is clearly a construction here, it is an object
of contemplation instead of a goal.
It breaks the myth that normality, natural can align with the billboard models.
Here my sister is the centre of attention not because of her natural beauty and charisma but because she became an intriguing beautiful creation. She is de-personified and a living object of contemplation.
My intervention aimed at illustrating literally what happens when we project ourselves in
people representing our body ideals.
I tried to symbolically bring the ideal to reality for people to interact with it.
When approaching the reflective body, we see a distorted image of ourselves.
This illustrates how our attempts to look like a certain model or influencer is a battle against
our own nature that we can’t win. What happens when we try to see ourselves in the ideal is that it shows you how unreachable it is.
The definition of ideal is : “existing only in the imagination; desirable or perfect but not likely to become a reality”
The altered reflection shows us the subjectivity of the way we perceive our bodies, giving room for acceptation, celebrating uniqueness and allowing a lighter relationship with our bodies.
full video
of contemplation instead of a goal.
It breaks the myth that normality, natural can align with the billboard models.
Here my sister is the centre of attention not because of her natural beauty and charisma but because she became an intriguing beautiful creation. She is de-personified and a living object of contemplation.
My intervention aimed at illustrating literally what happens when we project ourselves in
people representing our body ideals.
I tried to symbolically bring the ideal to reality for people to interact with it.
When approaching the reflective body, we see a distorted image of ourselves.
This illustrates how our attempts to look like a certain model or influencer is a battle against
our own nature that we can’t win. What happens when we try to see ourselves in the ideal is that it shows you how unreachable it is.
The definition of ideal is : “existing only in the imagination; desirable or perfect but not likely to become a reality”
The altered reflection shows us the subjectivity of the way we perceive our bodies, giving room for acceptation, celebrating uniqueness and allowing a lighter relationship with our bodies.
full video