TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE PERCEPTION OF BEAUTY AND BODY IMAGE
Resulting of the changes that have taken place since Ancient Greece to date, with the additional effects of puissant and political approaches, women have been transformed into objects of consumption. Women have been torn between some appearance-personality dilemmas and have been pushed towards an imposed concept of beauty outside of their selfhoods. Primarily through the effects of mass media, an evident personality-image issue has emerged. The consumerist culture of modern societies has virtually made the body into a project by turning the body project into a general activity for the community, and, through this, the female body has become the worksite for a set of beliefs and practices. The body has been recreated through surgery, plastic surgery, etc., which has become widespread with the help of advanced technology. In this study, the effects of the idealized female body on the perceptions and attitudes of people and the connection of this change with the culture of consumerism have been analyzed. As a practical approach, Jacques Derrida's deconstruction/post-structuralist discourse analysis has been used in their work.
INTRODUCTION The female body has been famous almost every period, from the distant past to date. In this study, especially as a result of societal-technological interactions, how and according to what the ideal female image, which has been visualized through attribution of different meanings, has been shaped. In this research, the answers to questions such as "what are beauty?" and "what are its connections to art, fashion, and marketing?" have been sought. In this path of exploration, which has been initiated at the core of these questions, examples of "body image," which have been addressed through the concept of beauty, and their effects on the works and artistic trends of their respective periods have been examined. In this context, in today's industrialized and appearance-centered world, the body images and representations of women that have been introduced into the market play a significant role in the shaping of society's concept of beauty. Through the ideology of consumerism, women are presented with examples of role models regarding how they should be, primarily through advertisements. The body images seen in advertisements are presented in a few categories: partners, mothers, or sexual objects. The ideal partner-mother images are shown through commercials advertising personal care products, cosmetics, cleaning, child-care products, and food items. Concurrently, in advertisements for men's products, the image of the well-groomed female, commoditized as an object of pleasure, is brought to the forefront. The same perception that promises a model's identity to women and invites them to love themselves through products also gives men the message that they can possess well-groomed women with the product. Women, who turn themselves into objects attractive in the eyes of men, also establish their roles and positions in the patriarchal system. Women are steered towards regular physical exercise, sports, diets, plastic surgery, and grooming products to obtain idealized and aggrandized physiques. Through the books, magazines, and television programs they are steered towards to achieve this goal, women are given the message that they should constantly look young, beautiful, and sexy. The plan is to increase life expectancy through healthy living for people to serve capitalism better. According to Foucault, "Capitalism has been achieved through the controlled insertion of bodies into the machinery of production and the adjustment of the phenomenon of the population to economic processes." (Foucault, 1993: 144) The male hegemony has been brought to the forefront, and women have been pushed to the background by the historical and societal dynamics of the patriarchal capitalist system. Thus, the concepts of masculinity and femininity have been developed to serve the interests of capitalism's middle-class male (Fiske, 1996: 120). These societal dynamics have been put in place by rulers and have determined the direction of consumerist practices. The rulership that possesses the capital has also come to have a say in the streamlining and rapidity of the money in the market. Social and political powers have given direction to a set of dynamics, such as fashion, by organizing individuals and groups. Waquet and Laporte (2011: 67) said, "Every rulership produces its symbols and benefits from them." Through these symbols and codes, concepts about the body, such as beauty-ugliness, health-illness, etc., are constantly reproduced in order to ensure the continuation of the current capitalist economic structure. The body, which especially materialized in the 19th century, began to take shape in line with the interests of institutionalized capitalism and the capitalist economy. With the added effect of mechanization, bodies have been commoditized and reached a state where their manpower could be bought and sold or rented to be used in factories. In the form that Foucault has named "Anatomy Politics," the body has come to be owned by the government. As of the 19th century, through the virtual reality created through the advertisements that have been produced, the individual has been steered towards meeting the needs of the capital instead of satisfying his or her real needs. The rulership, which has monopolized the media, ensures the acceptance of ideologies such as legitimization, decentralization, and desensitization in different layers of society. Using the media has influenced individuals' identity development processes, concepts of womanhood and manhood, lifestyles, consumption habits, and perceptions regarding societal roles. Throughout its journey from the past to our day, the female body has been made a part of the non-organic world through fashion. Today, in various mass communication organs, the female body is used in several categories, like partners, mothers, or sexual objects. This study, along with works that hold importance concerning their periods, through an examination of Andy Warhol's Marilyn Diptych; Orlan's Carnal Art performance exhibits, which carries the quality of being a critique of today's plastic surgeries; and, as a pop-culture icon, Wang Do's foot sculptures of famous people like Britney Spears, Ashley Judd, and Nichole Kidman, the historical journey of the woman's body is discussed over examples. A descriptive method has been used in the research, and an extensive literature review has been performed through the examination of works by philosophers, thinkers, and artists who have worked on similar topics. History of Beauty Ever since the first day of humanity, the concept of beauty has carried different meanings and descriptions. Ancient Greek philosophers described beauty as order, unity, proportion, definiteness, and goodness. Hesiod's (750-650 BC) statements saying, "those who are beautiful are loved, those who are not beautiful are not loved," has influenced our perception of beauty throughout the period that stretches from Ancient Greece to our day. Before the modern age, overweight individuals were perceived as attractive due to a food shortage. The concept of beauty has changed according to time and various circumstances. Over time, the works of art from Greece and Rome became the foundation for western civilizations' perception of beauty. While beauty held an objective quality until the Renaissance, modern philosophy has attributed a subjective meaning to beauty. Plato (427-347 BC) claimed that the harmony between beauty and goodness is from the realm of forms, from the stratum of gods. Aristotle (384-322 BC) defines the beautiful as live and natural and emphasizes that things that cannot be comprehended cannot be beautiful. This idea provided for the emergence of the concept of sovereignty. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) described pleasant, good, honest, transcendent, beneficial, and ugly concepts. According to Kant, beauty holds both "objective" and "subjective" qualities. He has said that beauty is shaped not purely by subjective perception but also by the individual's judgments. According to Hegel (1770-1831), a 19th-century German philosopher, beauty is transforming an idea into sensations and works of art. Heidegger (1889-1976) interpreted beauty as "the illumination of existence, truth," and the uncovering of the beauty within the secret structure within entities. According to Jean Baudrillard (1929-2007), beauty consists of a traded material of display (or demonstration material) (Baudrillard, 2004:169). Nowadays, consumption and marketing have taken over life and started to define beauty through the body. The body was commercialized, and physical appearance was a deciding factor in all aspects of life. In this manner, Michel Foucault (1926-1984) discussed it in his works titled Madness and Civilization, Discipline and Punish, and The History of Sexuality; views on human bodies are a complete societal construct (Wallace and Wolf, 2004:435). Benedetto Croce (1866-1952), who is one of the essential aesthetic thinkers of the 20th century, discusses the changes in the tastes of societies over time through aesthetic subjectivism. Perception of Beauty and Fashion Eco has claimed that "Beauty has never been absolute and immutable but has taken on different aspects depending on the historical period and the country" (Eco, 2006:14). In the past, fashion has been one of the most significant economic powers that have influenced this change. Fashion has caused a shift in customers' values by changing according to its time because of things like seasons, climate, nature, economic constraints, wars, and droughts. Fashion, a concept that has made a place in our lives after the industrialization period, has played a leading role in all kinds of traditions and customs in some societies. Outside appearance has been considered a part of the personality and has reflected the individual's place, social status, age, and character in the league to which they belong. Competition has caused new trends to emerge due to imitations, carelessness, coincidences, behaviors, and helplessness. People tend to adapt to the environment they are in. For example, in France, during the period of Luis the 1st, Mademoiselle Frontage, who fell off her horse during a hunting party, started the "Fortage style" hairstyle trend among the women of that period after tying her hair, which had been messed up, using the elastic band from her socks. In order to show his appreciation for a flower given to him by a beautiful woman, Prince De Gall cut a hole in the left collar of his jacket with a pocket knife and put the flower through it. This fashion, which emerged from gentlemanly behavior, is still maintained with the pinholes on the left collars of men's jackets today. The Ruff collar, invented for the first time to hide the throat of a Spanish princess with thyroid disease, became fashionable during the 1st Elizabethan period in England. The mini skirt, another trend extended to our day, emerged when a girl working at Mary Quant's workshop burned her dress. Politics has an influence on fashion. Fashion has shaped personalities through sociological and psychological effects. The desire to be different from others or existing trends have played a significant role in this psycho-social phenomenon. According to Waquet and Laporte, to be fashionable is to gain a foothold in society. Being included, opposition, conformity, contempt, or rejection are expressed through clothing and, in this way, shows group membership (2011:72-73). The female images used in the advertisements of our day convey the message of "you can be much more beautiful," which is constantly repeated through various means of communication. The person whose existence is threatened with the apprehension created as a result of this interaction has taken on a new identity. Through fashion, the latest trends were constantly created and marketed, and while superficiality became virtuous, fundamental rights and freedoms were destroyed. Recommendations have stopped being about necessities and have become the things desired and yearned for. In particular, the female body has been rearranged to benefit the system. The woman's status, who has been subjected to indirect violence, has changed. While the woman was saved from her life at home, she was enslaved once more by being controlled by society through the mythical ideal of beauty that had been created. The face of the female image has been used once more to sell particular goods or services. "Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience; but, as blind obedience is ever sought for by power, tyrants and sensualists are in the right when they endeavor to keep women in the dark because the former only want slaves, and the latter a play-thing." (Wollstonecraft, 2007:38). In his book The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), Veblen's concept of "conspicuous consumption" claims that consumption is utilized as an indicator of social status and a type of jealousy. The primary goal of consumption for vanity is to display social status and achieve a standard of prestige (Veblen 1995:72-88). The eventual desire for fashionable products becomes the basis of a "fetish in fashion" (Buck-Morss, 1989:119). In this consumer society, in which the female body has been shaped, initially, inappropriate body images are created, then commodities that overcome these issues are marketed (Orbach, 1993:17). The woman, who displays her body through fashion, desires to be watched and to attract looks. She achieves temporary pleasure courtesy of the myth of beauty promised to her. Women are motivated to take care of themselves through fashion. Especially in 19th-century academic art and some European painting traditions, the man is portrayed as the observer and the woman as the observed. The woman has been forced to watch herself while being observed by men. The female, who has been forced to live with two different internal components, the observed and the observer, since her childhood, is accused of her morality while being depicted with a mirror in her hand. For a woman struggling to be pleased with herself through fashion, the most important aspects of her life are the thoughts and judgments the people around her have about her (Baudrillard, 2004:113). In her book titled The Beauty Myth, Naomi Wolf mentions that women are trained to compete with each other for "beauty." The media and mass communication platforms have become essential tools in societal gender discrimination. The Media and the Modern Ideal Woman's Image Especially with the technological developments after the industrial revolution, the time's socioeconomic and cultural factors have changed. Works of art have lost their aura due to the rapid production, distribution, and consumption of images. Works of art have been commercialized through reproduction and have created the genre of pop art. Advertisements and the use of images were made widespread in the developing economy. The woman was portrayed not through her religion or other qualities but as a sexual object of desire (Berger, 1972: 144). The modern female struggles throughout her life to achieve the ideal woman image that has been marketed. The concept of beauty has been memorialized through "prevention of aging" with technical terms such as medicine, industry, therapy, cosmetics, hormones, vitamins, health, pills, medications, prescriptions, diets, exercise, and tests. Due to the imposed norms of beauty, youth, and sexual exposal of the body, women, who have weighted the world put on their shoulders, have had many problems, such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa (loss of appetite, vomiting). The woman, who has constantly been forced to be beautiful, charming, sexy, seductive, and provocative, has been remembered through her sexuality as if she were different from the other sex. She was eroticized into being consumable, and the market attempted to be kept alive through icons and body images created in the media. Through the use of idols, icons, and body images, the body standards, clothing patterns, nutrition, and even lifestyles of modern people have been controlled. People who refuse these semantics have been portrayed as people who are asocial, incompatible, helpless, and not at peace with their surroundings. Especially since the late 19th century, a clash between Consumer Beauty and Provocative Beauty has been witnessed. Over time, the avant-garde approaches seen since the second half of the 19th century have been defeated by the concept of ideal beauty, suggested by the commercial world of consumption, that they were struggling against. The people of the 20th century wear brand clothes and shape their hair and makeup in line with the paradigm of beauty proposed by mass media. The mass media has democratically presented distinct concepts of beauty for each class. The women seen in the advertisements of the 1920s and 1930s evoke the frail beauty of Art Nouveau, Liberty, and Art Deco. There are futuristic, cubistic, and surrealistic influences in the advertisements. (Umberto Eco) The mass media created futuristic characters and faces like those of top models such as Richard Gare, Claudia Schiffer, James Dean, and Audrey Hepburn. Through the media, these characters gave birth to new and local characters, going from the west to the east, and their ways of life were transformed into a part of everyday life through fashion. The question by the Guerilla Girls, a feminist artist group created after the 1980s, asks, "Must women be naked to be allowed to enter museums?" (Antmen, 2012: 7) draws attention. According to this question, the Guerilla Girls have opposed male domination, which is the cause of gender discrimination in feminist art. The positive results of the struggle they gave to abolish discrimination from art have also been reflected in our time. Feminist criticism has revealed the societal view of gender discrimination and the reduction of women as objects to be observed. (Antmen, 2012: 8) (Picture 1: Cindy Sherman, Marilyn Monroe, 1982, Photograph.) Cindy Sherman questioned how modernism changed the image of women and the tasks that this change imposed on women. In her series of auto-portraits, consisting of various costumes and makeup, she criticized patriarchal institutions that limit and circumscribe women, and the societal status women have been pushed towards with her feminist attitude. This series consists of female images that have transformed themselves due to exposure to violence by male powers. In the modern world, where women's actions are restricted, she tried to make the violence and pain that women have been subjected to visible through art. In her work regarding grotesque topics, the artist utilized disturbing materials such as medical prostheses, mannequins, body parts, sexual objects, and pictures of trash and vomit. The performances of Carolee Schneemann are the representational problems of the repressed female body. In feminist art, the suppression of the body and the exploitation of women has been approached as a situation regarding the liberation of women and their bodies (Baudrillard, 2013: 160). In order to go against patriarchal discourses and cultural codes, the feminist artist executed her performance by pulling out a roll of paper that she had placed in her vagina and reading the notes on it. The message consisted of statements by a male director insulting a female artist. In her performances, in which she has allowed acts of physical violence to be performed on her own body or has performed acts of physical violence on herself, Abramovic has used her body as an object and has focused on issues such as feminism, violence, and rape. With her Mendieta character, she has revived excluded, frightening, violated bodies or sex as a parody by questioning what it is to be a woman. In her works, she has produced her thoughts regarding masculine art, patriarchal discourses, and the secondary status of women with an attitude of "counter art." In her performance titled Rhythm 0, Abramovic stood without moving at all and allowed her audience to utilize the various items placed on a table, such as a flower, chocolate cake, chain, knife, and bullet, in any way they desired. In the beginning, the good-intentioned and polite participants gave her the flower, fed her chocolate cake, caressed her hair, or shook her hand. Members of the audience gathered the bravery when one person slapped her and subjected her to more extraordinary acts of violence. Some of the observers pointed a gun at her head, scratched her stomach and throat with a knife and made her bleed, and performed many other acts of violence and sexual harassment. Some individuals sucked the blood that dripped from her throat, and some even put her body, which they carried around as if she were not alive, on a table and tried to rape her. After a lady bothered by the violence wiped the tears from Abramovic's face, a minority group, influenced by each other, protected her by surrounding her in a circle. They bandaged her wounds, put her clothes back on her, wrapped her throat, and offered the artist cigarettes in this performance, which turned into a social experiment, how violence and abuse against women spread among a majority of people that give courage to each other, and the results of delayed intervention by good-intentioned and conscious individuals were revealed. As the performance was concluded, the audience, who did not want to face Abramovic, who had transformed back into a person, immediately left the hall. While Marina Abramovic faced pain and death in her performances, Orlan realized the operations on her body, which she titled Carnal Art, under the effect of narcotics. In her performances, Orlan went through many plastic surgeries as a criticism of the desire and obsession of the people of our time to look beautiful and, especially, the commoditization of women by the patriarchal order. The live operations of Orlan, who said, "art is a dirty job, but someone has to do it" (Yavuz, 2009: 106), are performances that oppose the obligation imposed on women to look beautiful. Orlan criticized the perception of beauty created by modern plastic surgery and the beauty standards imposed on the female body. She took a stand against the system's standardization of the body through plastic surgery and its power to alter the body. While other women have these operations to look closer to the standard measures, Orlan, with her surgeries, opposed the attempts of the patriarchies in modern Western societies to reshape the faces and bodies of women. In one of her works, Orlan brought together the different features of women who represented the concept of ideal beauty during the Renaissance and after it. Through a series of live operations, she brought together Diana's nose, the lips of Boucher's Europa, the jaw of Botticelli's Venus, the eyes of Gerome's Psyche, and the forehead of Leonardo's Mona Lisa on her face. There are mythological reasons for Orlan's choice of these women prototypes. "She chose Diana because she is a fighter and adventurer goddess and does not bow down to men; Psyche because she admired the love and the beauty of her soul, and Europa because she is in search of another continent can drag herself towards an unknown future. Venus is a part of her myth because of her similarities to Orlan regarding productivity and creativity. Finally, she chose Mona Lisa because of her androgyny. In Orlan's performances, the sinking of the needles into her face, the slicing of her lips, and the separation of her ears from her face were watched live by an uncomfortable audience. Wang Du, a Chinese-based French artist, is another artist who criticizes the areas in which the female body is used. Wang Du's works received much attention during the 1999 Venice Biennale. The artist reshaped the images of the American Pop world through sculptures and three-dimensional photos by combining them with characters from international media. The audience, who enter the exhibit hall, designed like a computer screen, by pressing "Enter," are first faced with capitalist wealth (?) and the armed forces that support it. At the center of the hall, there is a long, giant pipe in which hundreds of television screens have been placed. While the audience passes through this pipe, which represents the large intestine, Wang Du conveys the message, "The media has changed you, shaped you, and now you have become the excretions of the media." Displays of sculptures shaped like a giant, crumpled-up newspapers; trash bins on the digital screens; and icons, the body dimensions of whom had been altered, were also exhibited. Wang Du enlarged the things that the media had exaggerated. While reshaping the iconized images he had embraced from the media world by exaggerating their influence, he has drawn attention to simulacra. Wang Du, who dwelled on perspective illusions, exhibited a sculpture of three women. He displayed exaggerated versions of The Three Graces statue from above, below, and from a realistic perspective. The artist referred to the perception of philosophy of art's history and today. These giant statues, connected with the media, displayed the feet of Three People, Nicole Kidman, Britney Spears, and Ashley Judd, showing the aspects that keep these three women upright. Through its exaggerated, splendid culture, while drawing attention to the undesirable flaws of icons, popular media aggrandizes the same icon on the next page or the next issue again by legitimizing the images. This kind of disclosure and forgetting mechanism is a metaphor for instilling confidence. With his Organ-less Body images in Akbank Art, Wang Du reflected on the feet of the three women with their flaws, exaggeratedly, in his work titled Three People.
Conclusion Looking at the continuum of art history, especially in the late 19th century, women were transformed into representational objects. The market that does not put forth the myth of beauty cannot profit (Wolf, 2002: 287). The capitalist system has energized the economy by evoking the tale of beauty. A competitive environment was created in which people would compete over things such as career, success, money, social status, respect, and prestige. Minor differences, constantly created due to competition, attempt to keep this market afloat by reaching broad masses with promises of making them more modern or fashionable. The people of capitalist societies are on pins and needles when faced with each other (Duhm, 2009: 108). People who follow fashion and modern discourses experience a temporary hedonism and, thus, position their statuses in their relationships with others. The marketplace effect has created a state of hunger and poverty in individuals through the magic, appeal, promises, and fantasies it has created. The modern human is virtually taken hostage by the urge to buy and possess. They act under the influence of images, body images, idols, icons, symbols, and displays. The contemporary human who is paying the price for beauty and to possess the beautiful hollowed out the concept of beauty, which has been debated for hundreds of years and has reduced beauty to appearance.