Two Worlds Collide

The work of Aziz and Cucher is a little bit disturbing to me because I don't really understand it, and I don't know how to interpret it. It is certainly artwork, yes. What I am looking at are faces of people, appearently of all races. They have their hair, and their skin, their noses, but are missing their mouths and their eyes. So I am trying to put meaning to that.

Well, the eyes are the windows to our soul. The emotions that we feel in our hearts are poured out through our eyes. We see the entire entity of another soul in the person's eyes. They allow us to see and percieve our world. The mouth is our means of communication. As human beings, we comunicate with our voice; we are the only species on earth that has the ability to do that. We smile, frown and show our feeling with our mouth.

So, what I have put together is that Aziz and Cucher have taken away the two parts of our body that allow us to show emotion, and our personality. Our personality and being is our identity. That taken, we are unidentifiable entities walking about, and ostensively, we are all the same. As Adrian Rudolph said that this work is "cultural, commenting, perhaps, on the gradual but waxing loss of identity and the means of communication in a technological environment that promotes anonymity and conformity”. I think what he means is that, with today what society has become, and what has been promoted via technology, we have all lost our identity in conformity.

As for the manipulation of digital images: I think that it is really sad, especially reading about the astronomical increase in breast augmentation procedures. It saddens me very much to know that there are so many women out there that think that they will be happier people if only they had a bigger bust. I don't think that all of these women in entertainment and in real life that have breast implants realize the effect that they are having on women of all ages all around the country.

I think that the biggest problem related to this has to do with men. They see these women on television and in Maxim and Playboy and they think that this is what the ideal woman should look like. Now I should say here that not all men are like this: there are you good guys out there that like natural. But, there are many, many men that now have their heads wrapped around the notion that women need huge fake breasts to be beautiful. And in turn, women feel that this is what they need to be appealing to men. What a nasty cycle we have got ourselves into!

Unfortunatley, I have seen this happen in my personal life twice in the last year. I know a woman in her early forties, recently moved to California with her family. Her husband of many years just kind of casually mentioned to her one day, "Hey, honey, have you ever thought about a breast augmentation?" So what does she do after this? Gets them done. Went from a 32A to a 32D to please the husband (and herself, so she claims).

I can't really explain how I felt after I found out about this. Disgusted, of course. But more than anything, I was really sad. SO sad. Oh my goodness. If my boyfriend ever said that to me, I would be so incredibly upset. I would feel very...reduced. And I know that in her heart, the women that I'm talking about felt like this, though she will never say it. It's like, "Who I am as a person, every single wonderful, good quality that I have isn't enough to keep you loving me? All of that is overlooked?"

I must say that we women are just as bad: we put just as much pressure on men to have the perfect bodies too. My bottom line with all of this is: we are all perfect as we are. Please don't take the cover models seriously, guys and girls. If you truly love someone, the outside doesn't matter. So love your boyfriend/girlfriend, husband/wife as they are.