More Alex Box

I am beginning to question why it is that fashion stylists, make up artists, artists and designers are focusing so much on new ways of addressing the body through cosmetic application. Perhaps it is that the only way to interrogate and subvert the stereotyping of accepted norms of beauty is to deconstruct it from within, that is, by adopting several visual fashion politics of representation. This has resulted in multiple representation of the cosmetic body: re-mapping and re-inventing it in new ways. More often than not, this re-mapping has taken the form of a narrative told explicitly within the domain of the body as a site of pleasure and sensuality while avoiding gender distinctions.

The body - the most visible and real site of identity - is naturally the single unifying thread for all the artists and designers I have acknowledged so far within my blog. Cosmetics, fashion and clothing are a second source of identity formation ( as well as identity erasure). I think what I am arguing for is a new understanding of cosmetics, one that is not rooted in fashion.

Above all, these make up artists, artists and designers are challenging the stereotypical and normalising images of women in the media, and the unnattainable, narrow and male-defined standards of beauty by creating new beauty ideals.