The article and the information box contained errors and have been changed. See the bottom of the article for additional information.
Ugliness is beauty. It’s an elegant contradiction.
“I kind of like to twist traditionally ugly things to be beautiful in my poetry. I like darker stuff,” said Darcy Book, a first-year English student and writer whose poetry will be featured in the “True Beauty by True Bruins” art exhibition in the Kerckhoff Art Gallery from Feb. 17-23.
The exhibition is a production of the UCLA Body Image Task Force, and will feature all forms of student art submissions, including photography and written poetry. The artwork will respond to the question: What is beauty? The exhibit will serve as a lead-up to “I <3 My Body” week the following week.
“A lot of people would consider entrails or things inside of your body to be really disgusting, and that would be a picture of ugliness, but I wanted to turn it into something beautiful,” Book said.
Book said too much emphasis is placed on external appearance, while true beauty lies in the physical workings within the body that provide a delicate home to the mind.
Emma Basaran, a fourth-year anthropology student and director of the Body Image Task Force, is accepting all submissions to the exhibition.
“I’m accepting everything because if I rejected people, that would send a negative idea. It would be like saying your submission doesn’t represent beauty,” Basaran said.
Submissions include a blown-up letter from members of the Body Image Task Force about what body image means to the committee, whose mission is to increase awareness of body image-related physical and psychological issues, and to support positive body image.
Established last spring quarter, the young committee within the Student Wellness Commission garnered only a handful of female members from its start until fall of this year. Then, in September, around 15 more members, including some males, joined during recruitment to form a sizable committee. Basaran encouraged the sudden expansion of the committee, particularly the increased male support.
“Body image is something that affects men, it affects women, straight, gay, purple. Whatever. You can be (anyone) and you still have body image issues,” Basaran said.
Student artist Margaux Moores-Tanvier, a second-year political science student from southern France, submitted nine photographs of two “normal girls” with body image issues typical in nearly any young woman. One photo depicts the girls consumed by laughter; another captures a rapturous jump in the air. The artist’s goal was to depict carefree, genuinely happy moments in time, however fleeting.
“Beauty is something that is a truthful moment in time,” Moores-Tanvier said. “I don’t think it is necessarily aesthetic. Beauty is something that fills you up even if you can’t really understand it, and it is almost always fleeting – it’s never something constant. Even a beautiful building can look (ugly) under the rain.”
Moores-Tanvier said that positive body image and happiness, in general, is a choice.
“Anyone and anything can find happiness and little moments of life. Happiness and sadness, beauty and ugliness, … everything goes in pair. I’d like people to think more that bad things in life aren’t tragedy or that you have to be weighed down by things,” Moores-Tanvier said. “Things are good if you let them be good.”
Artist Olivia Jenkins, a second-year geography/environmental studies student, said her mother is the embodiment of this principle. Jenkins submitted a photograph of her mother, Pam Jenkins, a cancer survivor, to the “True Beauty by True Bruins” exhibit. Her mother is smiling down at the prominent scar on her chest, soft wrinkles framing her eyes and smile.
“Faith is what’s beautiful, and having that joy in faith and love,” Jenkins said.
While obesity equates to ugliness in America, it is synonymous with beauty and social harmony in other countries. While wrinkles signify deterioration for some, for others, they are the incarnation of wisdom itself. At some pinpoint on a map, fair skin is fawned over; at another, a velvety ebony is exquisiteness embodied.
“What is beauty?” Book said. “I don’t know how to define it, … I think you know it when you see it.”
Email Verhines at averhines@media.ucla.edu.
Correction: The “True Beauty by True Bruins” art exhibit will run from Feb. 17-23. Also, Ashley Verhines’ last name was misspelled.
“While obesity equates to ugliness in America, it is synonymous with beauty and social harmony in other countries.”
Perhaps in backward countries. This type of thinking is highly destructive. It is essentially saying obesity is “ok” since it is desired in other countries. Obesity is not natural and it can never be aesthetic. Instead of saying it’s ok we should admit it’s most definitely NOT ok – in health nor aesthetics. Push to be healthy – not divinely perfect as the media portrays it, but simply healthy.
– Je suis heureux de pouvoir admirer ma petite fille Margaux Moores Tanvier que j’adore…..