Week 7: Laura Aguilar

The Chicana artist that caught my attention was Laura Aguilar. In my honest opinion, the photo (to the left) was so raw and explicitly revealing, it really had a shocking effect on me. My deduction as to why her photo had such a jaw-dropping effect on me has to do with my distorted perception of beauty promoted within media. As a society, we are constantly being exposed to the idea that beauty should be standardized—that there’s a threshold every female must reach in order to be acknowledged and praised. Sadly, our media majorly influences and blindly conditions us to believe that beauty is black and white; skinny is attractive and fat is horrendous. There is no gray area. This can lead to a series of negative effects on female ideology such as depression and/or eating disorders. Aguilar’s photo is not something you typically see on a cover of Teen Magazine or CoverGirl. In my opinion, the nudity and unusual positions essentially serve as a symbol of confidence she has come to terms with her body. As for this being shot in a nature related background, Aguilar also incorporates the idea that we naturally come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes, we should be grateful with what have at that very moment. This photo reminded me that beauty is socially constructed and that it should not be monolithically standardized.