{"id":4031,"date":"2014-05-13T11:00:55","date_gmt":"2014-05-13T15:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/?p=4031"},"modified":"2015-10-15T19:03:19","modified_gmt":"2015-10-15T23:03:19","slug":"the-flawless-project-i-dont-give-a-fuck-if-you-think-im-pretty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/the-flawless-project-i-dont-give-a-fuck-if-you-think-im-pretty\/","title":{"rendered":"The Flawless Project: \u201cI don\u2019t give a fuck if you think I\u2019m pretty.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author | Annie Malamet<\/span><\/p>\n

Chrissy Bulakites describes her current ongoing <\/span>Flawless Project<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>as being \u201cborn out of [experience] as a photographer in the fashion industry.\u201d In simple black and white format, Bulakites creates diptychs. The first image is a straight on, un-retouched photo of Chrissy performing an every day regimen, the second is the same photographed but retouched. Through this format, Chrissy highlights the \u201csmoke and mirrors\u201d the fashion industry uses to perpetuate harmful body image.<\/span><\/p>\n

Before:<\/p>\n

\"Chrissy<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

After:<\/p>\n

\"Chrissy<\/a><\/p>\n

When I first heard the name of this project I immediately thought of Beyonce\u2019s ***<\/span>Flawless <\/i>song featuring Nigerian feminist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Chrissy told me the project is actually unrelated to the song, but she thinks the association is a positive one. \u201cDoesn’t everything come from a Beyonce song? \u00a0She IS the queen, after all. \u00a0Really though, if people associate the name of the project with her, then that’s totally fine by me.\u201d Even though Chrissy says <\/span>The Flawless Project <\/i>is a separate entity, I\u2019m going to choose to consider them within the same scope of radical feminist body acceptance. After all, Bulakites\u2019 photographs literally display an \u201cI woke up like this\u201d attitude.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI would definitely consider myself a feminist and I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a motivating factor in this project.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I asked Chrissy if she would feel comfortable describing this project as \u201cFeminist art.\u201d \u201cI would definitely consider myself a feminist and I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a motivating factor in this project.\u201d Chrissy told me. \u201cIt’s tough, because \u2018feminist\u2019 has become such a dirty word in a lot of ways.\u201d I pointed out to Chrissy that while the images definitely perpetuate a feminist agenda in regards to body positivity, she is still an attractive, relatively thin, cisgender white woman. I asked her if she was interested in branching out beyond self-portraiture and including other body types in this series. \u201cThe idea was to put myself out there first in order to encourage other people to feel comfortable doing the same. \u00a0I think my own body was a good starting point.\u201d Chrissy said. She is definitely right. If you want other people to put themselves out there, the best way to start is by making yourself vulnerable.\u00a0 \u201cI want people to realize that even though we all look different, we all feel the same. It’s kind of ridiculous that we’re all walking around feeling needlessly bad about ourselves as a result of all the digitally manipulated images we’re inundated with on a daily basis. \u00a0That said, I absolutely want to represent all body types, races, and gender identities as I move forward.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chrissy is also interested in including men in her project. \u201cI have had a surprising amount of men reach out to me about sharing their struggle with body image,\u201d she says.\u00a0\u201cThis adds an \u00a0interesting twist because these types of insecurities are typically considered a negative characteristic of females. \u00a0My point is,\u00a0I hope The Flawless Project<\/i> will make women realize that everyone is going through the same thing, even men, and create some sort of common bond that will make people reconsider their approach to feminism. \u00a0Of course, this sort of message is only going to resonate with people who are already open to feminist ideals. There’s also a message in there to those who aren’t, and that message is: Here I am. \u00a0I don’t give a fuck if you think I’m pretty.\u201d<\/p>\n

I stand behind the format Chrissy is working with as well as the socially aware framework the project is built on. I believe it is still important to be critical of any work you enjoy. I will be very interested to see how this photographer moves forward with the project. Currently, using only self-portraits, the project could easily fall into that trap of becoming a particularly inspiring Tumblr post. Including various body types and genders can only strengthen this work. It will show that the industry can literally manipulate any aspect of a person\u2019s body; for example, smoothing out a woman\u2019s \u201cmasculine\u201d features or lightening skin tones. Overall, I think this photographer has a lot of material to work with and I\u2019m excited to see how the project continues.<\/p>\n

Check out Chrissy Bulakites\u2019 website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Before:<\/span><\/p>\n

\"flawless_chrissy3a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After:<\/p>\n

\"Chrissy<\/a><\/p>\n

View slide show for additional images!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author | Annie Malamet Chrissy Bulakites describes her current ongoing Flawless Project\u00a0as being \u201cborn out of [experience] as a photographer in the fashion industry.\u201d In simple black and white format, Bulakites creates diptychs. The first image is a straight on, un-retouched photo of Chrissy performing an every day regimen, the second is the same photographed\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":4032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[45,379,845,264,840,51,106,113,842,841,174,81,52,843,135,189,134,38,844,307],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-art","tag-annie-malamet","tag-beyonce","tag-body-image","tag-chrissy-bulakites","tag-fashion-2","tag-feminism","tag-feminist","tag-flawless","tag-flawless-project","tag-identity","tag-lgbtq","tag-photography","tag-photoshop","tag-posture","tag-posture-mag","tag-posture-magazine","tag-queer","tag-retouching","tag-visual-art-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/05\/flawless_chrissy1a.jpg?fit=5050%2C3502","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6QBV8-131","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4031"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4047,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4031\/revisions\/4047"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4031"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}