I was at the gym, on the elliptical, and this idea kind of smacked me in the face.
I have battled with Body Dysmorphia most of my life and I believe most of us women do to some extent. I also feel, along with many others, that the images of unnatural women we are bombarded with in the media are damaging to our psychology.
This project is one way of standing up to our culture of objectification and not being afraid to show our faces. A lot of this I am sure you have thought about as we put on the War paint everyday and face the world. The men (in general, with some exceptions ) are not taking the extra 30+ minutes on average to apply their faces. We are more than just the surface. We are beautiful without work because we are real. Now I want to make something clear, my approach to this project has never been for women to feel any shame about whether or not they choose to wear make up or not in their day to day lives. The Goal is to have a conversation with ourselves about our relationship to the world and how we define our worth.

Objectification of women is something that we can not deny the existence of. If you pay attention you will notice it everyday. When women are seen as objects it becomes simple for someone to treat them as such. Within everyday, countless times a day, there are experiences in which a woman is being treated in a violent manner against her own will. Simply because the person commiting said act of violence does not consider her an equal, but something that is allowed to be taken, punished, or shamed. This is not okay.

I may not be able to fight all of the injustices that happen everyday so my goal is simple.

This project is a reminder to ourselves to take a minute to show the world our natural face. Too many young girls see un realistic images of women in the media and grow up believing they should mold themselves like clay. They learn to paint their faces and starve themselves to fight their natural female curves hoping to be come an object of desire.

We are not objects, we are people. Our worth is in how we treat eachother and how we can love ourselves. I hope that everyday each one of us can remember that if we wake up and work toward creating the life we want, and honoring the truth of who we are , maybe the next generation will have an easier time fixing the problems they inherited.

Just maybe if we stop worrying about how we look we can change the conversation to be about what we think.