Interchangeable Faces
Colonized, commodified, and reshaped by market forces, the palimpsestic female body is a site where cultural phenomenology and social perversions have historically been inscribed. The state of the spectacle empties and nullifies every real identity. In its place, the media offers ideologically infused avenues for identity construction. From the array of media text, gender roles are realized, social norms are cemented and beauty standards are established. Body dysmorphia and plastic surgery are symptoms of a society that propagates beauty as the standard against which all women are measured, hinging a woman’s worth on her waistline and rendering self-hood a shifting experience - inauthentic and skin deep.
