An Experiment

The day after Winter Break, I decided to create a collage of several magazine pictures to define the word "Beauty" and to discover how much my own goals have changed. On the top of the collage I have the word "Beauty" and next to this a small sticker which reads "Inspired By The Mystery".

The first magazine pictures include two large pictures of soccer players. I have always enjoyed playing soccer, and one of my childhood goals was to go on and play professionally. However, in high school I learned those chances were very thin, and my competitive nature decreased. I look at myself today and I long to be as physically fit as I was then. This made me really happy to see that I still feel one of my goals is to be proud of my health and to enjoy sports.

The next large picture rests within the middle of the two soccer pictures, and has a woman smiling really big. I have crossed out several words, and all thats left reads "Great..Affect...Love...Feel Daring!" One of things I have always enjoyed was reading about true love, and thinking about what that means. One thing I would like to improve is my confidence, and I hope to smile as much as this woman, and to be proud of my accomplishments. I left the words about love because I wanted to remind myself if I do someday fall in love I want to make sure I remain who I am. But now I need the time to discover who I am.

Around these pictures I have smaller ones which reflect my ideal fashion style, which includes rock & roll t-shirts, long hair, jeans, and nice outfits.This shows my desire to take pride in my appearance, and motivate myself to wake up earlier when getting ready for class.

I also have a picture of paper cranes, which was one of my goals. I read a book about a girl with leukemia, who tried to make 1,000 paper cranes. There was a legend where if you make 1,000 of these cranes you would be granted one wish. At the end of the story, she dies before finishing her goal. Her family and friends end up making the rest of the paper cranes, as a smybol of hope. I have this picture to remember to always help anyone in need and have a positive outlook no matter what happens.

I want to thank you all for taking the time to read about my collage. My ultimate goal with this collage was to see how far I could step back from the male gaze. I find that I still have trouble when thinking about physical beauty, but I hope to always remember that with beauty we can make of what we wish, and it should not fall into the make gaze. There are images we can put into our society which can help motivate and inspire women to be more confident. I hope with this project I can make myself confident and hopefully more talkative in class. :)