Thread by @MilvertonSaint, I'm taking a deep dive through art and history. It's wild how [...]

I'm taking a deep dive through art and history. It's wild how much the depictions of women's bodies have changed.

This might be a rant

A lot of women will feel more beautiful if painters and sculptors took careful care to their detail to capture every curve, stretch mark, sagging breast, and hip dip.

That turns the natural form into something to be marveled at. But watching a sculptor create

the human form out of marble reminds me of the comparisons of plastic surgery.

Plastic surgeons, in their own way, are also artist but they sculpt the human body. Sometimes to match unrealistic portrayals from other artists who employ Photoshop to create an ideal image that

exists only in their head. That is until a scupltor/surgeon brings it to life.

This brings to mind the age-old debates of chicken or egg and does life imitate art or the other way around.

I think that as much as we want to say art is a reflection of life that's not true. The goal of art is to tell lies.

Oscar Wilde covered this in his essay The Decay of Lying. He presented the idea of anti-mimesis.

Mimesis, or "to imitate", was an ideal presented by Plato... or Homer... I forget. But it made sense in ancient Greek because the goal of art was to imitate life.

Here are two statues of Aphrodite that Goddess of Love and Beauty and a painting called The Three Graces.

Cellulite, sacking breast, hip dips, and fat rolls. These were the epitome of beauty. Today these will be part of an ad campaign to push for body acceptance.

But that wasn't the case here. The goal here was to present these as the ideal beauty standard.

One could argue that an ancient Greece these were likely unrealistic standards for women who didn't have enough to eat and therefore appeared famished. And they'd be correct.

But that's where Oscar Wilde's ideal of anti-mimesis comes into play.

Oscar Wilde wrote The Decay of Lying in 1889 (I'm probably wrong on a year).

He asserted that art is, and will become, more influential to life than life is to art. At the time it probably seemed absurd with the introduction to a photography tbh.

Photography allowed people to be captured as they were but it also diminished and necessity of art to be realistic. That's where painting styles such as impressionism and cubism came into popularity.

We were able to see the world through the artist's eyes.

Now when I say that "the goal of art is to tell lies" I mean that the artist is going to give you their version of reality. Whether that's books, movies, or music, the ideal is to take you to a fictional place. One that's created by the artist.

Now artists can range from painters, sculptors, authors, makeup artists, comedians, or songwriters. They're all creators. Magicians. Liars.

They take something that does not exist and presents their version of reality. But reality is just a perception-based illusion so anyway...

I wasn't trying to get deep there. I'm actually incredibly high.

This thread is really long and I reference6 Oscar Wilde. A nigga is in his BAG right now! You feel me???

I think I said something about Plato too but I'm not about to go back and read all that.

So when you take these ideas that are created by individuals that's what we get a beauty standard that is far removed from reality. If we're operating on the idea of anti-mimesis. And we are because this is my thread I believe that life imitates art.

We come up with this. To this day people still reference Barbie as a symbol of beauty. Far removed from the times of realistic sculptures we now have a beauty center that is impossible to achieve.

Even creating the idea that you need evasive surgery to get rid of "hip dips" the part of your body where you don't have bones for flesh to sit on and create a round shape.

This is a shape that most people have and can ONLY be "fixed" with with surgery.

And it's where we have a lot of these things that are natural occurrence and most bodies that are perceived as flaws. By definition a flaw is something that should be rare occurrence in a group of people. Something unnatural.

Flaws are not cellulite, dark circles, uneven skin tones, or stretch marks. Those are things that humans have.

Their nature's way of tattooing your body. If you have a tattoo with a cool story you have a blemish from the time you had an acne breakout.

You may have C-section scars from creating life. Dark circles under your eyes from staying up late at night working to provide for your family.

These things are beautiful.

These are features that make a person human and tell their story.

These are what make a person beautiful.

Maybe beauty is not the right word and that's me looking at it from the artist's perspective. But it at least makes us real and there's beauty in the realness.

And this isn't some anti-surgery anti-makeup propaganda. It's just I feel the need to offer an alternative sometimes.

Ultimately, your body is your canvas and it's up to you how you would like to decorate your canvas.

And makeup is very much an art skill. It's beautiful to watch someone create their ideal image and accentuate certain features of their face.

I deadass forgot the point of this thread yo.

Maybe there wasn't a point.

Oh yeah!

Be gentle with yourself.

Right now everything is made to attack you and make you feel lesser than you are. There are profits to be made off of your insecurities.

Blah blah blah... I'm going to sleep.

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