Who is Beautiful?

In my transformative picture, I use an average woman who we can easily find walking on any street in the United States to advertise the same product. The purpose of the new image is to subvert people’s impressions of beauty. I believe that every person can be a model, but it seems that our standard of beauty is in fact defined by the images in fashion magazines. When you see the new image I created, will you think the model is beautiful? Will you still buy the product? Have you ever thought about what you really wanted to buy: the products themselves, or just the dream of being beautiful?

On the other hand, maybe we can use this image to test if Americans are really materialistic. If people don’t think those products are fashionable anymore and are not willing to buy them, then perhaps people are not really materialistic -- just extremely shallow and focused on beauty. However, if people still want to buy the products shown by the new models, they may just be materialistic at heart. Either way, people's’ values about this are deeply affected by their exposure to visual media.

Left image is retrieved from: VOGUE August 2013 issue # 08449

The woman in the right image is retrieved from: www.pinterest.com/jaacckkiieee/fat-girl-fashion/