• Select one image and describe what it seems to express about the person shown.


• Do you think the artist is telling the truth about him- or herself?


• If you created a self-portrait, what would you want it to convey?

People tend to look at this photograph with some sense of horror--the "body modifications" seem like a painful and radical move when viewed with modern eyes that are so accustomed to the growing trend of piercings and body mods. However, these are temporary mods--chewing gum stuck onto her skin. The method may be simple but the effect is still severe even when one knows it is only chewing gum. Here we have this beautiful, nude woman--a staple in art for centuries--who has defaced her beauty with the same substance that is so commonly spit out on the ground and thrown away as trash. Someone has defaced her, marked her, abused her beauty and her body. It is a poignant piece of feminist art. Her melancholy expression further adds to this effect, showing some of the inner turmoil she suffers. This photograph is a statement about the objectification of women's bodies in art and in life and the effects of that objectification.

It's one of my favorite pieces from this era.

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Although it looks beautiful I get shivers down my spine when I think about what was involved in this kind of body modification. I suppose that's the bitter sweet of the picture.

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When I first look at it I think why would someone purposefully do this to their body? Is it a form of hurting one's self, adding "beauty" to the body? I've seen skin tags that grow to be this size! S.O.S. for sure in understanding why. Then at second look I noticed the title "Star-ification" is it about attention, individualizing the self? Finally at third look I remembered something I just heard from Catherine Opie, explaining that her "tribe" or gay, lesbian, transgender community uses the body as a way to identify themselves, like plastic surgery, ways to control the way the body appears.

-Kimberly

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