Textual Poaching

 This is Farrah Fawcett in 1976. 

She is beautiful.

 This is my wife Kaydee. She doesn't know her husband is taking her picture. 

She is beautiful.

This is what you get when you combine their beauty. 

 It is an abomination.

I chose male heterosexuality as the subject from which I would draw personal experience and navigate a chosen piece of art. Now heterosexuality is a broad topic with many conventions and ideas bound within it, so to simplify things, I chose to focus on the aspect of attraction.  For the purpose of my writing, I will refer to those things that are attractive as beautiful, I understand beauty is another word with a wide range of interpretations, but regarding it’s use in this paper we will only consider it as a identifier of an attractive form.  For form and shape are really the foundations of attraction. The mold of nose or the proportion of a body can often separate those widely considered to be beautiful from those less commonly regarded as such.

With an established perspective I began to search the world of art predating my birth for some representation of a beautiful woman. Let’s just say I had options. I chose however to study the 1976 “Red Swimsuit” photo of none other than Farrah Fawcett. I chose this piece in particular because of its iconic nature and my familiarity with the same poster I had often viewed on my older brother’s bedroom wall.  The photo itself is beautiful; Farrah wasn’t an actress/model for no reason. I don’t feel the need to explicitly detail everything that makes her attractive; but thin, straight teeth, and bathing suit ought to cover most of our bases. I don’t think male heterosexuality is that complicated.

My next task was to manipulate the photo in some way to relate my own navigation of the piece. I didn’t want to create something shallow or disrespectful, physical attraction is founded in the appeal of shape and form but I figured there are better ways to reveal understanding than circling those shapes and forms that draw the eye more than others. I decided to combine the beautiful image of Farrah Fawcett with an equally beautiful image I see everyday; my wife. After snapping a photo of the missus when she wasn’t looking, I left to makes prints of both Farrah’s and my wife’s photos.  Here is where we return to the concept of shape and form. Both Farah and my wife are beautiful women, understandably Farrah’s photo is quite posed and contrived and my wife’s photo is much more natural and relaxed. Each woman is completely unique in shape and form.  I chose to marry the two images of beauty by dismantling the beautiful shapes of Farrah Fawcett and reassembling them within the beautiful form or silhouette of my wife. The resulting combination is nothing short of a monstrosity.

Applying the shape of one to the form of the other ruins the beauty of both. For attraction, I believe, is largely developed from the idea of comparison. Which girl is prettier and why, and so on and so forth. In completing my project I came to realize the ugly nature of comparing beauty. What shapes and forms make one person beautiful, don’t necessarily apply to others. There may be conventions of attraction, and perhaps they are just as natural as they are a product of society, but I do believe much beauty will go overlooked if it isn’t perceived in the context of it’s individual shape and form. Much like in Jenkin's How Texts Become Real, the reader of a text or beauty holds some amount of power to bestow value upon people and characteristics he or she find appealing. I think such regard for people should be considered most carefully before evaluating the worth of a subject.