![]() ![]() In the article, she examines the beauty standards of both African American and White European women through historical and contemporary lenses alike. In her essay, Hey Girl, Am I More than My Hair?: African American Women and Their Struggles with Beauty, Body Image, and Hair, scholar Tracey Owens Patton indicates that beauty is subject to the hegemonic standards of the ruling class. Comprising video works from five artists that address culturally, social-economically, and historically constructed insecurities, the programme reveals a simultaneous resistance to these insecurities: as a set of building blocks for the imagination of empowerment. As Grosz states, “Only when the relation between mind and body is adequately retheorized can we understand the contributions of the body to the production of knowledge systems, regimes of representation, cultural production, projection, and socioeconomic exchange.” In this regard, Skin Deep as a curatorial project attempts to yield a meaningful space on the question of the scale of beauty. Then, and only then, may the individual may aspire towards it-albeit in their own distinct way. On this account, Elizabeth Grosz challenges the concept of the ideal body by stressing that, in fact, a variety of ideal body types must precede any one single ideal. On the other hand, beauty is ambiguous precisely because it is general and abstract. Of course, the frame of reference is a construct of those in power. It is empty because, curiously, it can be measured: a beautiful size, weight, height, proportion, all are quantifiable. It is difficult to trace the fate of beauty over any extended period of time, as beauty itself is an empty, ambiguous word. What mirror images may show oneself to be beautiful?
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