Week 1- Improving or Hiding?

The portrait I chose to use was Cindy Sherman's self-portrait in which she had given herself a severe spray tan and too much make-up as an almost masking form. Just by looking at the photo alone, I felt as though I was looking at a woman who was trying to hide something about herself through spraying tanning and over doing it on the make-up. But it led me to a question of self reflection, "am I any better?"

The selfie I chose was taken back in June of 2017 after my cousins wedding. I had gone through 2 hours of hair and make-up on myself and still felt the need to "improve it" for people on my Snapchat by putting a filter on my face. Layers and layers of covering up all I felt was "unappealing" with myself, just to give others an image to look at in their perspective of beauty. I grew up believing that my identity was my beauty, and that my beauty can "always be improved". My family is of Puerto Rican decent (and is very religious), so my Tia Mara always says that "you are a form of God's temple. You must always keep it up to date and looking well kept". The more I think about it the more I realize, I am not look like Sherman's spray tanned form, but I sure felt like it. Hiding myself by masking it to others. 

In an interview Sherman did with The Guardian, she says that she realizes and accepts that her work is more than dressing up, but that "so much of it has been an examination of identity". As you go through much of her work, you can always find something to identify with in some aspect of life. For me, it happened to be the spray tanned woman. Make-up is my form of masking myself to others, and Sherman really depicted masking through "beauty enhancements" tremendously in this self-portrait. We try overcompensating through fashion and different beauty hacks we find out there, or in the jewelry we wear, or even in the materialistic things we buy, but are we improving our lives by doing these things, or are we hiding something about ourselves from the world?

External Sources:

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jan/15/cindy-sherman-interview