Monika Strasser
Essay
Can body modifications be seen as craft?
Monika Strasser
MA Jewellery & Corpus
Adellab (Metal Department) ¨
Konstfack University College of Arts, Crafts and Design
Stockholm
2011/2012
Supervisor: Christina Zetterlund
Abstract
The main question of this essay is: “Can body modifications be seen as craft?”. Craft is the essence of the author’s work and her passion. But she is also interested in beauty and has a critical approach to the fact that beauty generates pressure in society. Through history different ideals of beauty have been existing. Ideals of beauty and body modifications are very much connected to each other. Within this essay the author tries to connect the process of the interventions made to the body, in order to reach beauty, to her field of work, the crafts. As a trained crafts woman, she has also a critical view on existing hierarchies between different kinds of skilled making.
Other artists with similar ideas in their work are presented. It is investigated how different sources define craft, making, tools, and body modification. Using this background, four ways to connect craft and beautification are presented: the use of tools, the making of tools, the body, and the process of making.
It can be concluded that there is indeed a connection in the tools used to perform each task and the relation to the human body.
Contents
1 Introduction 2
1.1 Related Artists . . . 2
1.2 Outline . . . 4
2 Ideals of Beauty 5 3 Definitions 7 3.1 Craft vs. Making . . . 7
3.2 Tools . . . 7
3.3 Beautification and Body Modification . . . 8
4 Relation between Craft and Beautification 10 4.1 Association 1: The Use of Tools . . . 10
4.2 Association 2: The Making of these Tools . . . 11
4.3 Association 3: The Body . . . 11
4.4 Association 4: The Process of Making . . . 13
5 Conclusions 14 6 References 17 7 Lists of Figures and Tables 19 7.1 List of Figures . . . 19
7.2 List of Tables . . . 19
1 Introduction
“What is beauty? What is art? What is taste and fashion? Is beauty something to be observed coolly and rationally or is it something dangerously involving?” [Eco, 2004, Introduction]
Since I was very young, I have been wondering a lot about the ideals considered to be beau- tiful through history. I have been wondering a lot about what is considered beautiful and what is not. And today I still ask myself: “Who decides what is beautiful?”, or: “Who decides how we have to look, to make up, to dress up?”
I ask myself where the ideal of beauty will take us. Today, we are expected to have the perfect and forever young body. It is quite alarming that so many, and especially young, women seem to be manipulable and aim to reach these ideals. Even plastic surgery has become quite common.
In order to begin my research, I started to deal with the subject of “beauty”. This made me read a lot about beauty in many senses. Now I use this essay to order and bring together my thoughts.
Parallel to these questions about beauty is my passion for traditional craft. I also see craft in other kind of skilled making. For example, while sitting at my hairdresser, I often think that he performs a kind of craft. Being a trained metal crafts woman, I have a very critical approach to hierarchies, which are strong and common in craft, art, and making in general. Some professions have a better reputation than others. For example, a goldsmith is seen as being above a carpenter.
Then again, fine arts is considered to be at the top of the making professions, even when making skills can not always be seen in the final product.
Within this essay, I try to connect the process of the interventions made to the body to my field of work, the craft. Tools are vital in making craft and therefore are the starting point for my investigations. In the beauty industry there exist many tools. And tools are the most important items for a craftsman, too. I myself have a very strong affinity to the tools of my workshop. In my opinion, the combination of tools and the making of things is the meaning of craft.
For my practical master exam work I have chosen to make “tools for beauty” and to connect them to craft in general. I am interested in the act of augmenting the body. This act can be seen as a kind of craft, at least in my eyes. In this essay I try to provide more substance to this claim, using the tools as a connection.
The objects of my exam work hopefully make a statement about the beauty craze without judgments. The objects are supposed to make aware of the topic only. They shall be beautiful in some ways, but also disturbing and therefore question the beauty ideals.
The aim of the objects is to make the viewer aware, and to sensitize people about the beauty craze. How can these objects which make people aware of the beauty craze look? How can I visualize this, using mainly the brush but also other tools as a reference, as a metaphor for all kind of interventions on the body?
1.1 Related Artists
During the time I was writing this essay and while working on my practical work, I searched for artists who are working with similar ideas and topics. It does not mean that they connect craft to beautification, but their work has certain similar aspects to my own.
Jewelry artist Cho Hyunjung (Seoul, 1983) graduated from Konstfack in 2011 with her degree project The body of the embodied body. Her aim is to cast a light on our uneasiness toward our own corporality. She talks about the twist of feeling when someone sees a bodily detail of what is supposed to be attractive, for example in the incident of seeing hairs under stockings or ugly
toes inside beautiful shoes. She asks if everything that is supposed to be beautiful has a certain distance from real corporality. [Hyunjung]
Swiss jewelery artist Christoph Zellweger’s (L¨ubeck, 1962) work has been always circling around the body and the interventions made to it. He focuses on the body as a construction site. Estrangement and fragility of the contemporary individual are central to his work. His work discusses the body as a place for social rituals and non-verbal communication, like life extension, penis extension, chemical control of body and mind.
Dr. Pietro Morandi, an associate professor at HgkZ, University of the Arts Z¨urich, describes Zellweger’s view:
“In recent decades, the readiness to reach for invasive procedures and means of influencing the human body and its appearance seems to have drastically increased in society. This could also confirm the assumption that ways of human self-modification and perfectionism which still resort to accessories, appendages and extensions [...] are retrograde.” “Zellweger sees the human being as a homo ipsi faber (human who creates itself), as a human who strives to invent himself; a being, whose transformational fantasy and imagination overshadows what even its most advanced and boldest technologies of modification and self-change are able to reach. It is undisputed: the human body not only is increasingly interpreted as func- tionally limited, as insufficiently beautiful, as defective and unsatisfactory, but also actually
modified”. [Zellweger, 2007, p. 42]
Homo faber, the maker, the creator, is a philosophical concept articulated by Hannah Arendt [Arendt]. It refers to humans that control the environment through tools. I connect the homo faberto the craft person. Zellweger, starting from homo faber, invents a new name for the human species, the homo ipsi faber, whom I connect to the person modifying itself.
Zellweger connects homo ipsi faber and homo faber. This connection is similar to my con- nection between making of beauty and making of craft. Therefore I see similarities between my thoughts and Zellweger’s ideas.
The Swiss artist Manon (Bern, 1946) works with installations, performances and photog- raphy. She first came to prominence in the 1970s with the installation The salmon colored boudoir (1974/2006). She showed her sleeping room as an agglomeration of feminine intimi- dation. [Manon]
In her photographic series Woman with shaved head she addresses, among other things, the social construction of identity. Through the absence of the hair, which is considered to be a very important feminine attribute, Manon plays with the way men look at a woman, who presents herself alluring but at the same time denying [Maurer and Ulmer, 2008, p. 194].
I can connect her work in some way to my own work, because I am using hairbrushes and hair, hair being a very strong symbol of femininity. Perfect hair, strong, full, and shiny is one of the must haves today. Hair always had a special and strong symbolic character. Full hair stands for vitality and strength. Hair is used as an expression of identity. It’s seen as a media usable to change the own identity [Tiedemann, 2007, p. 36].
The Dutch artist Ine van den Elsen is dealing with the beauty of aging. In her work The Discoveringshe is looking for tomorrow’s beauty. She says that we live in a time where getting old is seen as something negative and everything possible is being done to manipulate mother nature’s clock. Liposuction, Botox treatments, or anti-wrinkle course are becoming common practice. We are literally polishing away everything that gives our identity and character. We are completely forgetting the beauty of life. She wanted to show the characteristic aspects of the face in her thesis project at Design Academy Eindhoven and thereby showed that these feared signs of aging are really quite beautiful and characteristic.
She found a way to give her own and other faces more identity. She created a kind of elephant skin by applying a very thick layer of make up to a face. The application of this thick layer of make-up can be seen as a kind of craft. Once it had dried, it started to pull and you could clearly see where the skin had a potential to create wrinkles. She then documented the results of this artificial aging process with a series of black-and-white photographs [van den Elsen, 2009].
1.2 Outline
This introduction intends to explain why I investigate the connection between craft and beauty modification. I try to do this without judging the beauty craze. Nevertheless, my own exam pieces should make the viewer aware of potential issues at stake within beauty craze. While I do not know of any artists that have shown exactly these connections in their work, I presented four artists that at least reflect on some related aspects.
In the following chapters, I will search for connections through different perspectives. In chapter 2, a historic view of the question is outlined. While chapter 3 is a short overview and definition of craft making and tools, chapter 4 presents four possible, very specific associations between craft and beauty modification. Finally, examples of my own work are presented together with the conclusions in the final chapter.
2 Ideals of Beauty
Everybody has their own view on beauty. Or what needs to be done to become beautiful. But then, generations of women have been, and still are, subdued to the beauty ideals. “Who dictates the beauty ideals?” This was one of my first questions. After reading a lot about ideals, it became clear that an important factor in this dictatorship is played by the beauty industry.
But this answer might be not enough. A better one is perhaps given by the feminist and sociologist Waltraud Posch. In K¨orper machen Leute, der Kult um die Sch¨onheit [Posch, 1999], she states that this also depends on the patriarchal society: “The history of beauty is a history of bodies and fashion, of a concept of morality and gender roles. In a patriarchal society, the visual appearance of a women shows us like a mirror the dream and desires of men.” [Posch, 1999, p. 36]
Perhaps the industry is patriarchal indeed. But as feminist Teresa Riolan found out, the in- ventors of most of the beauty products and tools are, surprisingly, women [Renz, 2006, p. 301].
More women have more money and power and scope and legal recognition than we have ever had before; but in terms of how we feel about ourselves physically, we my actually be worse than our unliberated grandmothers. Recent research consistently shows that inside the majority of the West’s controlled, attractive, successful working women, there is secret under life poisoning our freedom; infused with notions of beauty, it is dark vein of self-hatred, physical obsessions, terror of aging, and a dread of lost control. We are in the midst of a violent backlash against feminism that uses images of female beauty as a political weapon
against women’s advancement. [Wolf, 1991, p. 10]
The ideal of beauty norm today is reduced to extreme underweight and perfect young skin.
The natural forms are reduced to problem zones which are seen as being ugly and they need to be altered. But the real problem zones begin in the head: a “skinny low” self esteem and the fear of not being desirable without having a perfect body. This fear makes cash machines tinkle: beauty is a million dollar business.
The beauty-product market is big. Industries like fashion, advertisement, sports, and cosmet- ics propagandize their beauty ideal. In addition, there is the market of plastic surgery and well- ness. All industries earn when humankind is not satisfied with its appearance [ViolenceStudy.org, 2012].
Posch’s critical book starts with the text: “Being beautiful like a model: millions of women want it. They do abrosia, do gymnastics and puke with the aspiration of more acceptance and love. They suffering with their bodies and hunt for an unrealistic ideal.” [Posch, 1999, foreword]
Related to Posch’s patriarchal theories, Mich´ele Roten questions in her book Wie Frau sein [Roten, 2011] certain free decisions and choices made by women today. They accept themselves with the comment: “I did it for me because I like it, because I want it”. A breast augmentation to double D or just something simple like accepting the husbands surname with the comment: “Its not important to me, I really wanted it that way”. These examples show that such decisions are not really free, if seen from an objective point of view. In the best case they are compromises, in the worst case they are free decision camouflaged as opportunisms or resignations in a society by men’s ideals marked [Roten, 2011, p. 52].
This is what I want to say when I talk about the pressure that society generates in the case of beauty. Often the urge to intervene on one’s body comes from the outside. However, us women tend to say that we would do it only for ourselves anyways. “In the way that women got free from the children-kitchen-church feminine craze”, writes Naomi Wolf in her book The beauty Myth [Wolf, 1991], “the beauty myth over-toke the function of an authority instrument of the society.”
Through history we can see that different ideals of beauty have been existing all the time, from ancient Greece until today. Umberto Eco in History of beauty, shows through paintings a picture of the most important changes in the beauty ideals throughout history.
Since ever beauty has been equalized to social power, strength and intelligence.
[Schuele, 2002]
“If in history the required ideal of beauty was only followed by the high society, now, thanks to the mass media, this is different: everybody wants to be beautiful today”, writes feminist Slavenka Draculic in the German feminist magazine Emma [Draculic, 2006].
Ideals of beauty and body modifications are very much connected to each other. Through history, modifications like the corset or the Japanese foot binding among others, have been con- sidered as beauty ideals.
Sacrificing something in order to reach an ideal was and is still common: always people have used different kind of ways to get closer to their beauty ideal. In German, we have the say: “Wer sch¨on sein will, muss Leiden.”1It could not be more true, since many of the ways to become more beautiful are somehow painful. But why do we want to do this to us? Why are we willing to bear all the pain? Is it because of the pressure of the society? “Beauty generates social pressure”, says Schuele [2002].
Today we no longer say that the corset or Japanese foot binding are beautiful. Now, we do have other beauty ideals which require often body modification. And in some years, they will maybe not be considered being beautiful anymore.
I have chosen to write more about two different kinds of body modification: weight control and plastic surgery (see Chapter 3). As augmentations we can see make up, hairdressing, waxing among others. But weight control, in my eyes, is one of the most important interventions in order to reach the beauty ideal of today. Having a perfect figure is considered a must-have of today.
The fact that we should be forever young is even much stronger than the must-have of a perfect figure. Plastic surgery is mostly used against aging, but is also used for weight control (for example in the case of liposuction).
As other types of modification beside plastic surgery, we can see, for example, toes that were deformed because of high heels2, piercing, tattoo, etc.
The next chapter presents a definition of what craft and making means to me, but relates also to the ideas of three well-known authors. Further, two specific kind of body modification and their tools are shown.
1“Who wants to be beautiful must sacrifice for it.”
2Does this mean that a shoe can be seen as a tool that deforms the toe? I do not think so, because usually the shoe is not worn for that purpose.
3 Definitions
3.1 Craft vs. Making
Craft: 1. an art, trade, or occupation requiring special skill, especially manual skill [...] 9. to make or manufacture (an object or objects) with great skill and care.
[Random House, 1995, Webster’s College Dictionary]
Making: 1. the act of a person or thing that makes. Make: 1. to bring into existence by shaping, changing, or combining material.
[Random House, 1995, Webster’s College Dictionary]
Often the words “craft” and “making” are used as synonymous. According to the above definitions, if somebody performs a “craft”, the end product is important. A skilled (and often trained) craftsman creates an object, often with a focus on the æsthetics. “Making” can describe exactly the same action—however here, the focus is on the process itself and not on the end product. Sometimes, the result does not even really matter. Also, “making” can be performed by anybody, not only trained or skilled persons.
Different implications are given to the word craft as the emphasis shifts away from material towards technique and process. “Actions, technical processes, specific materials are a description of craft”, writes Howard Risatti in his book A Theory of Craft [Risatti, 2007, p. 16].
Glenn Adamson sees craft as a process. Not only the end result is craft, the process of mak- ing something is craft. Adding to this, he also questions the unfairly undervaluing of the crafts compared to art: “Craft is not a defined practice, but a way of thinking through practices of all kinds, and there is no reason that any medium or genre of production should be more conducive to this way of thinking than another.” [Adamson, 2007, Introduction]
Richard Sennett, in his book Handwerk [Sennett, 2009], sees craft not only in the traditional understanding of a carpenter or goldsmith etc. He sees craft also in playing music, programming or cooking.
The definition of craft used in this essay is to create something by using tools, by using the hands, or even the body. The process of making is very important to me, but obvioulsy, as an artist, also the outcome counts. I see the use of tools together with the skilled making to gain a result as craft. This is how I perceive it.
3.2 Tools
Tool: 1. an implement, esp. one held in the hand, as a hammer, saw, or file, for performing or facilitating mechanical operations. 2. any instrument of manual operation. 3. the cutting or machining part of a lathe, planer, drill, or similar machine. 4. the machine itself; a machine tool. 5. anything used as a means of accomplishing a task or purpose: Education is a tool for success. [Random House, 1995, Webster’s College Dictionary]
A tool is a device that can be used to achieve a task. An implement that is used by hands and used to perform or facilitate manual work, specifically it denotes a small manually operated device.
Even some animals use tools for certain limited tasks, but we human use them very exten- sively and in such a diversity. I do agree with Charlotte and Peter Fiell in the foreword of their book Tools for living:
It is no exaggeration to suggest, that tools had made man, because they allow us to shape the environments and cultures that makes us who we are. [Fiell and Fiell, 2010]
Already Himsworth showed that humans have used tools to intervene on themselves since prehistoric times. Himsworth states that:
Since prehistoric times, tools have shaped human existence. The design, the making and the use of tools is one of the most important feature which has shaped and accompanied human existence. The first tools in history were made of flint and obsidian. Obsidian is a volcanic glass which is exceptionally sharp if broken. The intentional striking off of a large piece in later times justifies the believe held by some, that at certain periods in the Stone Age man
shaved himself. [Himsworth, 1953, p. 18]
While this last quote is not a scientific, rigorous definition of “tools”, it clearly shows that the instruments used to change or modify the body are seen as tools. By using these tools, nothing is created, but something that was already there is modified. But clearly, improving objects, like refurbishing something, is seen as craft.
Looking at the beauty industry today, there are many different kind of tools (see Association 1, Section 4.1) to be used to get a more and more beautiful body. It seems that the industry invents tool after tool just to sell even more of them. Most of these tools are supposed to be used only for one kind of accomplishment.
3.3 Beautification and Body Modification
Beautification: to make or become beautiful.
[Random House, 1995, Webster’s College Dictionary]
Body modifications: intentional permanent or semipermanent alterations of the living hu- man body for reasons such as ritual, folk medicine, aesthetics, or corporal punishment. [...]
Common methods that have been used are incision, perforation, complete or partial removal, cautery, abrasion, adhesion, insertion of foreign bodies or materials, compression, distention, diversion, enlargement, and staining. [Encyclopædia Britannica Inc]
When I was sixteen, a friend of mine was sick with anorexia. When she had a body weight of only 35 kilogram, she was still looking into the mirror, perceived herself as fat. This experience did affect me very much. It was the first time I came aware of the beauty craze. Through the years I observed many times how crazy women worked, convinced they do it only for themselves, against their own bodies.
“The beauty cult is so subtle that still today millions of women believe that they would actu- ally choose to do diet after diet for themselves” [Posch, 1999, p. 35]. This is why I am critical to some aspects of beautification. I often asked my self if I would perceive the world and the things different than others do. I recognize that I often see beauty in unexpected, for others normal or unspectacular, things. As quoted by Posh in her book, psychologyst Ursula Nuber says:
We would have less worries and would think less about wrinkles and fat if the media wouldn’t permanently show us the ideal bodies and faces and at the same time show us the thousands of treatments and possibilities we have. Wouldn’t we know nothing about all this things against wrinkles, we wouldn’t think about it so much. [Posch, 1999, p. 101]
Especially young women tend to emulate skinny models. Feminists and doctors have sug- gested that the very thin models featured in magazines may promote eating disorders [BBC News, 2000]. The young women are influenced by the photoshopped images they see in the media when they decide what is beautiful and what is not.
There is a trend of being skinny, but being skinny also means having a certain control about the own appearance. Women who can not accept how their body is formed or curved are often unsatisfied. If they get hungry, they immediately chasten themselves, they want to control all about themselves [Hauner and Reichart, 2004, p. 74].
Eating disorder and controlling weight is a kind of modification of the body. The natural body is forcefully controlled by evoking food rich in calories, reducing the weight through the use of laxatives and appetite suppressant, through excessive sport, or by provoking vomit with the help of a finger. In this kind of shaping techniques I see already a connection to craft. The body is shaped by the use of tools.
The most radical technique of beautification is plastic surgery. It can be seen as a modifica- tion, because the body is permanently changed. Lifting, nose job and liposuction (extraction of fat) are the commonest types of modification. Tools used for plastic surgery are, for example, scalpels, cannulas, syringes, and dermatomes3.
Through the operative beautification the individual looses his authentic self.
Schuele [2002]
Lifting is performed today already on 40 years old women, in the USA they are even younger.
The American Academy of Facial Plastic Surgery announces that 39% of the face liftings are made on women between 30 an 49. Aging is the biggest enemy of today’s women. [Posch, 1999, p. 165 and p. 101].
The next chapter will discuss the connections between tools and body modification more in detail by using four specific connection points, or associations.
3A dermatome is a surgical instrument used to produce thin slices of skin, which can be placed somewhere else on the body.
4 Relation between Craft and Beautification
Since I define craft as a process of making with focus on the result, the beautification of the body can be seen quite clearly as a craft. To connect craft and the beautification of the body I have searched for several connecting points, or associations. The four associations presented here are the most obvious and the ones that make most sense to me.
4.1 Association 1: The Use of Tools
The use of tools to accomplish a task is the most obvious connection between craft and beautifi- cation. Upon closer inspection, there are even some tools that have similarities (Table 1). Many professions gravitate around beautification. For example make up artist, hairdresser, cosmetician, nail designer, and cosmetic surgeon. All of them use many tools to practice their profession. They can be considered as craftspeople and have an own craftsmanship as well. If I compare the tools from my goldsmith workshop to tools found at places where beautification is performed, I can see many similarities:
Craft (Goldsmith) Beautification solder scissor nail scissor wire scissor hair scissor
file nail file
bind rail eye lash curler sandpaper pumice stone
saw scalpel
pencil powder puff
Table 1: Some tools found in my workshop, and their counterparts used for beautification.
One might notice that the result of craft is a final object, whereas in beautification, there is no object being made. Or that just changes are performed on an already existing body or object.
But Risatti attributes to the class “craft” not only object hood but also applied function. Applied function for me is the process of making and the use of tools. So says Risatti: “Object hood and applied function are feature common to man-made things, including tools and even some simple machines, not just craft objects.” Risatti also states that craft has traditionally been used to refer to things with applied function, like cutlery—knives, forks, ladles, spoons, and spatulas.
But should cutlery be considered as craft just because it is functional, too?
Is there a strong enough connection via function and tools and craft objects that is compelling enough to include them in all the same class? Risatti [2007, p. 41]
If we include them all in the same class, does this mean that tools by themselves are craft?
And does this, if tools are seen as craft, lead to the conclusion that everything that is made with tools is craft as well? Then, obviously, beautification can be seen as craft. Risatti examines the terms “practical use” and “applied function”:
When generically referring to the realm of the ’practical as opposed to the abstract’, terms like ’use’ and ’function’ lump all practical, functional objects together, thereby erasing subtle differences in kinds of uses and types of functions. Teasing out this differences will show how craft objects, dinner flatware, tools, and machines, as functional objects, both relate and differ from each other in subtle but substantial way. [Risatti, 2007, p. 42]
In his book, Risatti also refers to the Oxford English dictionary, in which a tool is defined more specifically as an instrument of manual operations, “usually, one held in and operated directly by the hand”. Considered the applied functions, we can say a tool is something used directly by the hand with intention to make something by doing something to material [Risatti, 2007, p. 42].
Does this mean that to make something by hand, to do something to material, is craft? For me this is exactly what happens with beautification on the body. In the case of beautification, we use tools to achieve the task. And the process of making with such tools is very relevant. Every task has its specific tool, as it is the case in craft too.
One could argue that the control of the weight then can not be seen as being craft because obviously no tools are used. But as a tool you can also use your hands and fingers, which have been used since ever as tools by a craftsmen. In the case of an anorexic woman, she uses her finger to trigger vomit in order to control and form her body. Weight can be controlled also by visiting a gym—and there are plenty of tools which can be used to shape a body.
4.2 Association 2: The Making of these Tools
The making of the tools can also be seen to be craft. Beauty tools traditionally have been made by silversmiths. They made hairbrushes, combs, powder boxes, and mirrors, objects that were used later on for beautification . This is already a connection between beautification and craft.
Another connection between beautification and craft by making of tools I could discover while writing the text Tools for Beauty. I had the possibility to visit a factory which still produces hand-made, wooden, body brushes. All workers at the factory worked on the brushes skillfully and with passion. Surprisingly, they all were visually impaired. It seems like a paradox that the brushes are made by visually impaired persons, but are intended to be used by others who want to become more beautiful visually.
4.3 Association 3: The Body
The body can be seen as a central element, in crafts as well as in beautification. Craft has a strong connection to the body, craft needs the body, the body holds the tools and controls the movements and the strength that are needed to make and to produce something. Craft is a bodily work. (See also my definition of craft, Chapter 3.1)
Risatti says: “Tools are manually operated, they never reduce the body to a mere source of power as do machines. Tools involve motion and are designed around the hand and the body as kinesthetically sensitive.” [Risatti, 2007, p. 52]
By their nature, tools have more in common with craft objects than with machines. The way tools respect the human body through their kinesthetic properties, the way they are sensitive to the body by being made to fit the hand and extend the body’s motion, tools reinforce traditional craft [Risatti, 2007, p. 53].
Often crafted objects are intended to be used by the body. For example, a cup or a bowl is made to be hold and to drink from it, cutlery is made to be use for eating, and so on.
Risatti also relates craft objects in their purpose and in their function to the body. He suggests that craft objects have a close relationship to the body. “The making of craft objects (based on the functions of containing, caring and supporting) involves a conceptual approach to the body.
Craft objects and their functions/the use of them are related to the body.” [Risatti, 2007]
Because craft is a bodily work, I connect it to the act of beautification. Beautification is a bodily work. The body itself is used to work on the body, with tools as well as with hands
directly. The product is the embellished body. It does not matter if it has been done by oneself or if it has been done by another person. Always, the body plays its part.
4.4 Association 4: The Process of Making
Process: 1. a systematic series of actions directed to some end [...] 2. a continuous action, operation, or series of changes taking place in a definite manner.
[Random House, 1995, Webster’s College Dictionary]
The making itself in both craft and beautification is a process of shaping, changing, and combining. Risatti sees craft as an applied function, as a practical, physical function [Risatti, 2007, p. 19].
The act of physically doing something, the making, in both craft and beautification, encloses similar techniques (Table 2). When I compare process techniques that I use in my own goldsmith workshop to the ones used in beautification, I find many similarities.
Craft (Goldsmith) Beautification
sawing cutting
metal filing manicuring
drilling piercing
polishing brushing
sanding peeling
painting putting on make-up
oiling creaming
shaping augmentation
Table 2: Examples of process techniques used in my workshop, and their counterparts in beautification.
5 Conclusions
After researching about beautification and beauty craze, I must admit that the trend to be perfect and to have a perfect body is much bigger than I imagined. Irregardless of the power positions that women have reached in politics, education and profession in the last 30 and 40 years, irregardless of the fact that they participate actively in business and have their own money, they are still valued for their look.
Beautification is everywhere. In the mass medias like magazines, TV, music videos, and computer games one can find pictures modified by using Photoshop (which can also be seen as a kind of craft). Should we continue Umberto Eco’s book about the history of beauty, we could include photoshopped pictures from the magazines.
I’m not against beautification or the use of all these kind of techniques: everybody has to decide for her or himself if she or he needs and wants it. But I am wondering if people hunting for beauty end up to forget the beauty of life, as Ine van den Elsen [2009] also points out: “And why don’t we see the beauty in the natural imperfections and traces that life gives to us?” I agree with Schuele who says: “through the operative beautification the individual looses his authentic self.” [Schuele, 2002]
Interesting is also that in a time when everybody is talking about individualism, people end up looking the same, because they all try to reach the same beauty ideals.
I asked my self where the intervention on the body starts. Where does the pressure start?
Where does an unnatural suffering start? Everybody needs to decide where the border is for themselves. But for me, the pressure starts where the physical pain begins.
My research question has no influence on the beauty craze, nor is it supposed to change the perception of craft. Nevertheless, it is interesting to compare the individual aspects in order to see similarities. An interesting thought could be that craft, as it is an endangered species, could slowly go towards beautification. Beautification will become more and more important. There is no end in the trend. And some day beautification may become the new craft.
More beautiful, slimmer, younger. How will it go further, in the future, with beauty? Ulrich Renz in his book Sch¨onheit gives the following predictions:
1. With or without men, the beauty graze will go further, in all times, human have invested in their resources to augment and to achieve their beauty. With the growing of our wealth, we will do more for our effort to get more beautiful.
2. The youth craze will grow. In an aging society youth will be a rare commodity. And this makes it to an object of desire.
3. With the technology advancement, beauty will be more and more feasible. And what is feasible will be done.
4. The fast development of beauty technologies will enlarge the breach between poor and rich. How today we can read the origin of a person from the condition of his or her teeth, in future we can do it from the free of wrinkle skin.
5. The force and necessity to be beautiful will augment. This doesn’t mean that everybody will follow it. Every development brings a counteracting force. There will be the ones that will not participate, to not submit themselves to this stress, not gonna do everything whats possible and which anyhow or therefore enjoy themselves on their own beauty.
[Renz, 2006, p. 299/300]
Figure 1: Mascara by Monika Strasser, 2012. Silver, lichen.
Figure 2: Branch (work in progress) by Monika Strasser, 2012. Skin, bee wax.
The objects I made for my practical work represent beauty tools and refer to the process of making. On one hand, they refer to the making of craft, because they are made using craft techniques. On the other hand, they refer visually to the process of beautification, and to its daily rituals, like brushing, peeling, putting make-up on, or even plastic surgery.
The process of making is very important in craft as well as in beautification.
The objects show unexpected, imperfect, however beautiful, details. Imperfection in nature is the main reason for diversity. But when we follow beauty ideals, we will look very likely all the same.
Some objects look like tools (Figure 1). They refer to natural beauty and the changes caused by the passing of time. Other objects represent my own constructed version of nature. This rep- resents the trend to modify the human body to the extent that it no longer looks like what nature had originally developed (Figure 2).
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7 Lists of Figures and Tables
7.1 List of Figures
1 Monika Strasser, Mascara . . . 15 2 Monika Strasser, Branch . . . 15
7.2 List of Tables
1 Some tools found in my workshop, and their counterparts used for beautification. 10 2 Examples of process techniques used in my workshop, and their counterparts in
beautification. . . 13
