Pioneering the Geographies of Beauty: A Recap...

Thanks for everyone who participated in our presentation last Tuesday. We hope we provided some further food for thought on how Geography can be applied to unconventional subjects, such as Beauty. Here is a recap of the main arguments proposed in our presentation...

• Cultural variations of what defines 'beauty' do exist. We gave examples of pale skin in the Far East and tanned skin in Western Europe to represent wealth in both cases. Also, how over time our preferences are changing in relation to mass media influences, such as curvy female figures of the 1950s (Marilyn Monroe) and size 0 models of today.



• We also argued that despite these cultural influences on what defines 'beauty', there are underlying features that all persons perceive as attractive, eg. symmetrical facial features, wide eyes, full lips, overall youthful appearance



• Traditional English views of beauty as pale and 'white' justified slavery; 'Black' was seen as 'ugly' and inferior. This arguably continues today as we showed in our examples of Latin American and North American Beauty Pageants.



• Fairytales continue the 'Feminine Beauty Ideal' today and porpagate the idea that beauty, especially feminine beauty, equals success (feminist perspective).



• The Beauty Salon can be seen as a liberating space; making beauty available to all. It can also be viewed as a theraputic landscape. However, it can also be viewed as exploitative of people's insecurities about their appearance.



• The international success of Ugly Betty contests the notion of the 'Beauty Myth' (Wolf).



• Virtual Beauties, eg. airbrushing in popular media are creating an ideal of beauty that is unattainable to the vast majority of the population.

We hope that we've reminded you of the different worlds produced by beauty. We appreciated all the questions and comments put forward after our presentation, they were insightful and really helped us evaluate our presentation. We noticed, however, that one main point was drawn from our presentation, that of beauty as liberating, but we hope that this blog will remind you that that was not the main message; we wanted to show you all the different worlds of beauty, including those which exclude not only liberate.

Referring to the table at the top of the page, these are the results from the activity in which we asked you to rate the nine photos.

General findings showed that people tended to rate the pictures in similar categories to one another. Therefore, enforcing the idea that people share similar ideas on how they perceive beauty.

Hope you enjoyed it! Good Luck in the exam everyone!

Helen, Vicky and Angela.

References:

Baker-Sperry , L. and Grauerholz, L. (2003) The Pervasiveness and Persistence of the Feminine Beauty Ideal in Children’s Fairytales, Gender and Society, vol.15 (5), pp: 711-726

Biddle, J. & Hamermesh, D. S. (1993) ‘Beauty and the Labour Market’. NBER working paper No. w4518

Black, P. & Sharma, U. (2001) ‘Men are Real, Women are Made up: Beauty Therapy and the construction of Femininity’. Sociological Review. Issue 1 Vol. 49 pp100-116.

Black, P. (2004) ‘The Beauty Industry: Gender, Culture, Pleasure’. Routledge: London.

Featherstone, M. (2003) ‘Body Modification’. Sage: London.

Jordan, W. (1968) White Over Black: American attitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812, University of North Carolina Press; Chapel Hill.

Ossman, S. (2002) ‘Three Faces of Beauty: Casablanca, Paris, Cairo’. Duke University Press: London.

Simpson, T. (2007) ‘The Hidden Beauty of Ugly Betty’. Daily Mail [on-line] accessed 11.01.07 available from; http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=427992&in_page_id=1879

Sarwer, D. B., Grossbart, T. A., Didie, E. R. (2003) Beauty and Society, Seminars in Cutaneous Medicine and Surgery, Vol. 22(2) pp: 79-92

Wolf, N.. (1991). The beauty myth. Doubleday: New York

Spaces of Colour: Feeling blue or are you red faced?

We're all Geographers and stereotypically we're all very good at colouring in, but do you think about what colours you're using?

Our senses play an important role in our everyday experience, providing us with information about the world. Colour as sensed through sight, is just one way of looking at our experiences of everyday life.

“The idea of colour may initially seem a highly simple one, however it can be explored in various different ways due to the different meanings it conjures up” (Lamb and Bourriau, 1995)




Through the colour of red, we transformed the lecture theatre into an otherworld that hopefully conjured up different feelings... Intimacy? Passion? Rage? Anger? Or did you feel threatened? This experience was then contrasted with bathing our learning space in blue, complemented by Miles Davis, demonstrating the associations of colour with other senses.


Our relationship and associations with colour may be explained by semiotic theory, perception theory and classical conditioning. Explanations of these are all available on your handout (hope it's helpful!).


Feeling Blue..?
Colours have different effects on us emotionally, they are
consciously used to create different environments. Colour therapy uses the seven colours of the spectrum to balance the body’s energy centres (Chakras) and also helps to stimulate the body’s own healing process. In relation to geography the most immediate and felt geography is that of the body. It is the site of experience and expression:


“We live in worlds of pain or of pleasure” (Davidson and Milligan, 2004)


Artists and Colour
Perceptual Colour and Pictorial Colour. Perceptual is often sub-conscious associations whereas Pictorial is deliberately used to create a mood or feeling e.g. Van Goghs Night Cafe.


Colour Cross Culturally
Universal colour associations may be those associated with the elements e.g red= fire= heat. Or those associted with companies and branding e.g. Coca Cola= Red.


Regional or National differences in colour persist e.g. White in western countries being associated with marriage and purity whereas red is the Hindu counterpart.


"The connection of meaning and colour seems obvious, natural nearly; on the other hand it seems idiosyncratic, unpredictable and anarchic” (Kress and Leeuwen, 2002 p343)

Keep those Colouring Pencils sharpened!
Laura, Sascha, Sophie and Miranda.

The good, the bad and the memory: An overview

Despite the time lapse since our presentation we hope you may have spent some time contemplating the role of memories in the construction of places and we hope this comes as a reminder to trigger such thought!

The aims central to our discussion are as follows:

• To discuss whether memories make place or place makes memories
• To assess the difference between good and bad memories and their association with place
  

If you missed our lecture the other week we got all of the theoretical background out of the way and defined place and memory before exploring the above aims within a Jeremy Kyle style chat show. This highlighted how personal interpretation of such ideas results in a variety of perspectives and answers. From such analysis/discussion we discovered the following:

1. That stereotypical ideas of good and bad memories exist. Differences were found here in the application of such memories with good memories being commonly associated with places (e.g. the beach, the home, a night out) while bad memories tend to focus more on an action or experience (Being attacked, a crash, being ill).

'Another Place' by Antony Gormley. Artwork on a Merseyside beach - not only a common idea of a 'happy place' but also making connections between man and the landscape.

2. Significant gender patterns were also discovered within the literature and our own research. Here females commonly thought that the memories created the place with literature suggesting this to be due to their more emotional state. Conversely, males believed that the place was more significant in creating a memory, with a day watching football at a stadium being one of the common examples used.

3. The concluding point here however was that the emphasis of memory in constructing a place differs greatly depending on the individual, their background and the experiences they have had.

We hope our contribution was thought provoking and we have included a few references for those who wish to explore these ideas further.

Kim, Sam, Sarah R, Sarah H and Matt.

•Adams, S., Kueblie, J., Bayle, P. A. and Fivush, R. (1995) ‘Gender differences in Parent-child conversations about past emotions: A longitudinal Investigation’, Sex roles, 33, 309-323.

•Bluck, S. (2003) ‘Autobiographical memory: Exploring its functions in everyday life’, Memory, 11, 113-123.

•Knez, I. (2006) ‘Autobiographical memories for places’, Memory, 14, 359-377.

•Said, E.W. (2000) Intention, Memory and Place. Critical Inquiry 26(2) pp. 175-192.

•Twigger-Ross, C. L. and Uzzel, D. L. (1996) ‘Place and identity processes’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, 16, 205-220.

'Geographers are mystics': the beauty of emancipated sausages

Spaces of beauty and spirituality all woven together to the beat of a bongo drum. What a way to kick off a Tuesday morning, and what a perfect end to Series 1 of the Otherworlds student activities. Thank you to everyone who has taken this opportunity to think outside the box: and well done to those of you who decided not just to take a tentative look outside that box, but wholeheartedly made a leap for it, feet first into the great unknown. Let's hope we see Series 2 running so successfully next year.

The first group today suggested beauty can be a cause for liberation. The second group argued critical engagement with education can be empowering and emancipatory. We may not all be able to obtain some elusive universal image of beauty to liberate us in the consumer driven society of the spectacle, but we can all grab any opportunity for learning with both hands and break out of the sausage factory... or at least add our own unique spice and flavour to the recipe.

As the group said, the course is indeed sculpted by each and every one of you, which gives you a unique opportunity to take geography wherever you want it to go. I hope you enjoyed your roles as sculptors, and that you have found the journey as much fun as I have. Mike's definition of geography as a spiritual process bothered some - but his reason for defining it in this way is spot on - geography is about "trying to figure out things that are bigger than yourself". Otherworlds has given you an opportunity to be in the driving seat of that figuring-out process.

If there is a 'universal beauty' to be had - then I think we saw it in action on the grass outside Mansfield Cooper in the sunshine this morning. Go forth and search for unity, emancipated sausages, and as Craig said - where critical pedagogy isn't up for grabs, you should fight for it!!