Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful

By on Nov 11, 2012 in Cuttings

Mirror with 'Don't hate me because I'm beautiful' written on it

A proposal for an art installation

Materials

* 100 mirrors of various sizes
* Vinyl lettering spelling out the phrase “Don’t Hate Me Because I’m Beautiful” on each mirror’s surface

Ideally installed in as small a space as possible that nonetheless allows viewers to be completely engulfed by images of themselves. Inspired by a story in notoriously misogynist publication The Daily Mail, where a conventionally attractive woman claimed that other women hated her for her beauty, and even more so by the vitriolic backlash against her piece, mostly disparaging her claims to beauty and her effrontery at proclaiming herself beautiful without the approbation of wider society. The piece seeks to thrust the viewer into a meditation on their own complicity in the acceptance of women’s bodies as public property for dissection and dis/approval.

About

All-purpose writer, Fulbrighter, uberskiver, medievalist, flâneuse, techno-shamanka, Broad Universe social media wrangler, History Witch, Pirate Pub Captain, currently sailing between Dundee & New York, K.A. Laity is the author of Owl Stretching, Unquiet Dreams, Chastity Flame and oodles more singular titles and folderol. Her Web site is: KALaity.com.