Make Sure You Get My Good Side

From: Kelly
The title of my photo is “Make sure you get my good side”.  The inspiration for my photo comes from personal experience with having my picture taken.  Every time I go to take a picture with friends or family I immediately find myself saying “I need to stand on the left because that’s my good side”.  It’s a very strange insecurity I have about my face because even though I know I am beautiful and like the way I look, I just feel that my left side photographs better than my right.  Then I started thinking back to the reading about ambivalence toward sex and women’s bodies, beauty is a beast and self-objectification.  These three sections had a common theme of women feeling the need to manipulate their bodies in order to feel better about themselves or to get male attention.  The readings along with my own experiences had me thinking more about the insecurities young girls and women find with their face instead of their bodies while at the same time trying to gain attention from men.  And as a makeup artist I’m very familiar with the need to have a flawless and beautiful face.  I chose to combine five photos into one because I felt it was more powerful than a single shot.  I also chose to photograph myself but the feelings I’m portraying are not my own and are merely for the benefit of the photos.  As you can tell one side of my face, what I believe to be my good side, is completely covered with makeup while the other is completely natural.  I did this specifically to show the contrast of who girls really are with what society tells them to look like.  Along with the makeup I arranged magazines to lay on top of to represent where the need to be beautiful comes from.  I opted for Cosmopolitan magazines because not only does it represent beautiful sexy women but it also represents sex and teaches women all they need to know about being what a man wants.  The fact that I’m laying down and the magazines are somewhat above my head hint at the fact that this is what young girls look up to.  The four photos on the outside show a girl who is trying to match what she sees in the magazine with what she sees in the mirror.  The photos show a girl whose trying to be what she thinks she supposed to be but is obviously unconfident.  The photos are posed and arranged so that they appear to be looking at the one in the center for inspiration.  Wondering eyes, a look of desperation, a touch of anger and an attempt to be sexy all surround the center photo in which the eyes of a finally confident girl pierce out at the viewer.  Although the photo in the center seems to convey confidence and strength, the fact that the face is still divided represents the idea that even if you appear confident, with a face full of makeup, it’s not who you really are.  And that’s something even the strongest makeup can’t hide.