Find my blog posts for this project here.
With everything I do, I like to think of myself as a kind and compassionate human who has is socially and politically engaged and uses my creative and technical capabilities to help campaigns close to my heart but also help others around the globe.
With my art, I always strive to make a change, to question the status-quo and to ask questions that audiences/viewers wouldn’t normally ponder upon. You may say I have an anarchist attitude to that of societal norms and I wouldn’t dispute this statement; ever since I was able to think for myself, I have always questioned the world around me and never settled for the lazy answers. And I believe that our government gives ‘lazy’ answers; I believe a societal change is needed. Activists are anarchists and vice-versa which is why I am always passionate about art merging with that of activism which can and has made many needed changes in our world that probably wouldn’t had changed without ‘normal’ people taking a stand and using their voices to make change for a better world.
In the Make Me Pretty art activism project, a group of my university peers and I set out to the streets of York to ask passers-by to ‘make me pretty’. A simple statement that we would pose to someone to see how they would act upon it. Out of the people who would engage with us, many would happily take some makeup and add to one of our faces where they saw fit, others would jokingly smother us in masses of foundation and colourful eyeshadow or lipstick. However, what happily surprised me were the amount of people who would not add any make-up to our faces and comment we were ‘perfect as you are’ or others who would wipe the makeup of our faces; a truly beautiful gesture from one stranger to another.
Taking part in this project really opened my eyes to not only the beauty and makeup industry but to human kindness and connection. Speaking to strangers about their relationship with makeup and why they wear it or not was really eye-opening to a girl who has never worn it. Makeup can help uplift people, can be part of self-expression, it can be all these things to an individual but that’s exactly it: self-expression, it is up to the individual to decide how they may or may not use makeup and that’s brilliant. I may not agree with the beauty industry and the pressure it puts on people, but I love how makeup can give the gift of confidence and expression to its users.
In one of my blog entries for the Make Me Pretty project I said
‘Makeup truly has the potential to [empower] its users but the saddening fact of the matter is many of its users don’t feel empowered or beautiful when applying it every day. However, it isn’t makeup making us feel insecure; it is society taking agency from women and men all over the world and telling them makeup is for covering up imperfections, those of which imperfections and insecurities society itself created.’
This is what I think sums up my thoughts behind why the project was so important to me and why I believe asking questions of society if needed.
