When approaching the topic "resilience" I knew I wanted to explore the concept of breaking conformity and maintaining strength through the fickle compliments that cause us to distrust ourselves and what we told ourselves to stand for. It fascinates me how eager we are to seek the judgement of those around us and how heavily influenced we are by others interpretations of how we should present ourselves.
There is a constant societal pressure to become "something" to impress someone for a reason that no-one can successfully deduce. Why is it that we all blindly follow this succession? Why do we claim to embrace diversity yet clip it down in fear of being too "different"?
My model explained to me that she had always felt there had been something wrong with her hair. As she was growing up all her hair treatments were ways in which to suppress its natural state: to straighten, to lengthen, to cover. This impacted her self-esteem as she built up a belief that it was almost like a crime for her to want to embrace her own hair. She had fallen into this spiralling hatred for the simple strands that grew from her own head. Why?
My model has continually worn either weave or braids ever since she was very young. She explained to me how compliments on how she looked with a new hairstyle felt disingenuous because she began to dwell on the fact that the compliment was subject to the strands attached to her scalp, that her face was framed well by something that wasn't her own, that she could not be considered beautiful unless she had this uncomfortable weight of excess hair on her head. Despite the fact braids gave her persistent headaches and affected her concentration in class she continued to wear them because it had been drilled into her mindset that it was a necessity.
After many years of wanting to wear her hair natural but feeling she would be condemned by it she finally decided to embrace her own hair. Ever since, she has felt the freedom of embracing her natural beauty and has persevered through the jokingly crude comments and the innocent curiosity of those unacquainted to a black woman's natural beauty - all of which I believe to be an aspiration for us all.
I wanted my images to demonstrate purity and self-acceptance and most importantly: self-love. My model had expressed to me that whilst she was contemplating wearing her hair natural for good she kept condemning herself. She was under the misconception that those women wearing their hair naturally were only successful in doing so because they had attractive features; as if that is an essential component to be yourself. She was under the impression that she was not attractive enough to wear her own hair. This is a common misconception that many women have; however, with these images and my models story I hope to convey that beauty is drawn from the self-love emanating from within, never from the shallow foundation of current standards.
We cannot strive for physical perfection when physicality is so temporary. We should not expend all our energy lusting after the acceptance and praise of our peers when their opinions are so interchangeable. The only result is a precarious self-exultation with an impending failure that takes us back to square one with a desire to please at the expense of our own well-being.
I hope her story can be an example to others wishing to break away from the constraints of societal conformity, to embrace their true diversity and not to strive for features we have been brainwashed to desire. To accept ourselves as an entire package and not to lust for the many individual features pertaining to those we idolise. That is the crux of it all: mixing and matching features to create the ideal figure of the ideal person. By defining perfection based on the common interpretation of beauty we are simply devising ourselves to become a body of clones. Conformity will be the death of our intelligence.
There is a constant societal pressure to become "something" to impress someone for a reason that no-one can successfully deduce. Why is it that we all blindly follow this succession? Why do we claim to embrace diversity yet clip it down in fear of being too "different"?
My model explained to me that she had always felt there had been something wrong with her hair. As she was growing up all her hair treatments were ways in which to suppress its natural state: to straighten, to lengthen, to cover. This impacted her self-esteem as she built up a belief that it was almost like a crime for her to want to embrace her own hair. She had fallen into this spiralling hatred for the simple strands that grew from her own head. Why?
My model has continually worn either weave or braids ever since she was very young. She explained to me how compliments on how she looked with a new hairstyle felt disingenuous because she began to dwell on the fact that the compliment was subject to the strands attached to her scalp, that her face was framed well by something that wasn't her own, that she could not be considered beautiful unless she had this uncomfortable weight of excess hair on her head. Despite the fact braids gave her persistent headaches and affected her concentration in class she continued to wear them because it had been drilled into her mindset that it was a necessity.
After many years of wanting to wear her hair natural but feeling she would be condemned by it she finally decided to embrace her own hair. Ever since, she has felt the freedom of embracing her natural beauty and has persevered through the jokingly crude comments and the innocent curiosity of those unacquainted to a black woman's natural beauty - all of which I believe to be an aspiration for us all.
I wanted my images to demonstrate purity and self-acceptance and most importantly: self-love. My model had expressed to me that whilst she was contemplating wearing her hair natural for good she kept condemning herself. She was under the misconception that those women wearing their hair naturally were only successful in doing so because they had attractive features; as if that is an essential component to be yourself. She was under the impression that she was not attractive enough to wear her own hair. This is a common misconception that many women have; however, with these images and my models story I hope to convey that beauty is drawn from the self-love emanating from within, never from the shallow foundation of current standards.
We cannot strive for physical perfection when physicality is so temporary. We should not expend all our energy lusting after the acceptance and praise of our peers when their opinions are so interchangeable. The only result is a precarious self-exultation with an impending failure that takes us back to square one with a desire to please at the expense of our own well-being.
I hope her story can be an example to others wishing to break away from the constraints of societal conformity, to embrace their true diversity and not to strive for features we have been brainwashed to desire. To accept ourselves as an entire package and not to lust for the many individual features pertaining to those we idolise. That is the crux of it all: mixing and matching features to create the ideal figure of the ideal person. By defining perfection based on the common interpretation of beauty we are simply devising ourselves to become a body of clones. Conformity will be the death of our intelligence.