The Unattractive

This work comes from one of my A Level Fine Art projects. It explores the contradiction between how the steps of becoming more ‘attractive’ look and how they feel, set against the finished result.

Through photography I wanted to show the unnatural, unconventional angles that society prefers not to see: the conventionally ‘unattractive’ poses and expressions that, as women, we tend to hide.

Society plays down realistic beauty standards and the reality of women’s day-to-day routines. What interests me is that this pressure so often comes from women, and is aimed at other women.

A further set of trial shoots, experimenting with saturation and scale. Make-up, and the ritual of applying it, is perfected for an audience and made to look flawless. Pushing the colour makes the images unsettling, and that is the point: it captures the intensity of how we judge our own worth.