The secret to flawless skin! Look younger in minutes! Shave off inches! These are the messages that are fed to us in our social media feeds daily. Emphasis on our looks has never been shouted louder. Until very recently, depth had been privileged over the superficial. In recent years, this opposition has changed. Surface is now what matters.  

I have created these satirical beauty hacks to highlight the immense pressures that are put onto women to adhere to very narrow beauty ideals. Reducing our age, our size, our ethnicity is asked of us in these incessant daily routines. These hacks are absurd but also in the realms of possibility of what is out there, teaching us that we need to try harder to be beautiful at all times. 

Online tutorials and hacks are rife with platitudes of empowerment whilst simultaneously telling us we need to prescribe to certain standards to be accepted. The beauty hacks are a purposeful balance of absurdity and the grotesque. Humour in art is "employed to activate repressed impulses, embody alienation or displacement, disrupt convention, and explore power relations in terms of gender, sexuality, class, taste, or racial and cultural identities." (Higgie, 2007:12). Because of this, humour plays an important role in this series. 

Photography and video are the natural vessels for this type of work as they mirror how these influencers communicate to the world. In a way I am taking back photography as a subversive discipline. I want viewers to laugh with recognition at how silly so many of these beauty hacks actually are. I deliberately replicate and parody the influencer aesthetic by using my smartphone to film the videos and live performances on Instagram.

Bee Stung Lips

Bronzed Goddess Tutorial

This video is part of the series the F Word. It is a finalist shortlist for the AOP Student awards 2021.

'Gorge��' is about the relentless cycle that we put ourselves through in the search for perfection. The shame of eating and the quick fixes. The soundtrack is a disturbed search for approval on loop.

Fat. It’s a dirty word, apparently. A word that is almost stage whispered when people say it. I'm fat and I'm OK with it, but when other people elude to my size, they hesitate over the word ‘fat' in an attempt to find a ‘kinder’ euphemism. Why, in Western society is fat considered so obscene? 

The F Word, aims to challenge the impossible beauty ideals that are pressed onto women. We are consistently told by fashion and the media that we are not good enough and this has a profound negative effect on self esteem. If we are fat, we have failed: ‘Not only does it defy contemporary beauty standards but it also reads as a failure to perform successfully the daily and incessant work on the body that one is required to undertake in [...] society in order to be a good subject.' (Granata, 2017:153). In a 2014 study by the NHS, it was found that fat shaming was more harmful on mental and physical health than racism, yet it is still not a subject that is taken as seriously. 

With the F Word, I wanted to challenge these narrow body ideals by creating a couture outfit from images of my untamed flesh. By turning myself into a garment it felt like I could talk about body image on several levels: the taming of flesh, the absurdity of 'correct flesh', and our relationship with food. Costumier Nicholas Immaculate worked with me on creating the outfit.  

Gorge��

Taken from the series the F Word. The costume for this project was named after Jame Gumb, the character in Silence of the Lambs. Posing was inspired by classical paintings and Kim Kardashian.

Fat. It’s a dirty word, apparently. A word that is almost stage whispered when people say it. I'm fat and I'm OK with it, but when other people elude to my size, they hesitate over the word ‘fat' in an attempt to find a ‘kinder’ euphemism. Why, in Western society is fat considered so obscene? 

The F Word, aims to challenge the impossible beauty ideals that are pressed onto women. We are consistently told by fashion and the media that we are not good enough and this has a profound negative effect on self esteem. If we are fat, we have failed: ‘Not only does it defy contemporary beauty standards but it also reads as a failure to perform successfully the daily and incessant work on the body that one is required to undertake in [...] society in order to be a good subject.' (Granata, 2017:153). In a 2014 study by the NHS, it was found that fat shaming was more harmful on mental and physical health than racism, yet it is still not a subject that is taken as seriously. 

With the F Word, I wanted to challenge these narrow body ideals by creating a couture outfit from images of my untamed flesh. By turning myself into a garment it felt like I could talk about body image on several levels: the taming of flesh, the absurdity of 'correct flesh', and our relationship with food. Costumier Nicholas Immaculate worked with me on creating the outfit.  

Jame Gumb Trio

Taken from the series The F Word.

Fat. It’s a dirty word, apparently. A word that is almost stage whispered when people say it. I'm fat and I'm OK with it, but when other people elude to my size, they hesitate over the word ‘fat' in an attempt to find a ‘kinder’ euphemism. Why, in Western society is fat considered so obscene? 

The F Word, aims to challenge the impossible beauty ideals that are pressed onto women. We are consistently told by fashion and the media that we are not good enough and this has a profound negative effect on self esteem. If we are fat, we have failed: ‘Not only does it defy contemporary beauty standards but it also reads as a failure to perform successfully the daily and incessant work on the body that one is required to undertake in [...] society in order to be a good subject.' (Granata, 2017:153). In a 2014 study by the NHS, it was found that fat shaming was more harmful on mental and physical health than racism, yet it is still not a subject that is taken as seriously. 

With the F Word, I wanted to challenge these narrow body ideals by creating a couture outfit from images of my untamed flesh. By turning myself into a garment it felt like I could talk about body image on several levels: the taming of flesh, the absurdity of 'correct flesh', and our relationship with food. Costumier Nicholas Immaculate worked with me on creating the outfit.  

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