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13 Aug

Serpent eyes and alien cheekbones: artist Daglara’s trans-species aesthetic

Serpent eyes and alien cheekbones: artist Daglara’s trans-species aesthetic
Athens-based artist Daglara explores how performance can create a martyr narrative with extreme emotions, and how one can reach a degree of frenzy. Her make-up, her art’s protagonist, is a trans-speciesist dream. Inspired by facial expression from the animal kingdom, her beauty looks recall to mind sci-fi creatures and the hypersexualised femme icon. Serpentine eyes, a dolphin brow, and alien cheekbones — with Daglara, it’s all about hybridisation.   Using a mix of seemingly disparate references, Daglara combines queer performativity with cutting-edge beauty and garment creation to boost problems with gender subversion. As Greece continues to be a rustic with an excellent deal of inherent prejudice, abiding to a system of heteronormative discrimination, her work comes as a very important force...
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13 Aug

Contained in the secret world of Instagram’s ‘dolls’

Contained in the secret world of Instagram’s ‘dolls’
Should you’ve never had or intended to have cosmetic surgery, likelihood is you wouldn’t have come across a ‘cosmetic surgery doll’ account on Instagram. Away from public Instagram feeds, communities of people who find themselves undertaking cosmetic procedures are turning to the platform to research and document their goals and results. The private accounts are called ‘Sx pages’ and there’s normally a rigorous process keeping out anyone who’s not going under the knife.  Rebecca*, a 35-year-old based in London, first turned to the world of ‘cosmetic surgery dolls’ on Instagram after deciding to get liposuction on her entire body. Wanting to research further than the clinic’s website would allow, she created her first private ‘Sx page’ to search out the clinic...
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13 Aug

30 years on from The Beauty Myth we ask

30 years on from The Beauty Myth we ask
In 1991, feminist scholar Naomi Wolf published The Beauty Myth, a giant and daring work of nonfiction that put to paper the oppressive beauty ideals of the day. It cleverly traced the links between patriarchy, the ideals peddled in contemporary promoting and pornography and increased pressures for girls to get surgery alongside rising numbers of eating disorder diagnoses.  “Western economies are absolutely depending on the continued underpayment of girls,” she wrote within the introduction. “An ideology that makes women feel ‘value less’ was urgently needed to counteract the way in which feminism had begun to make us feel value more.” Gloria Steinem praised the book, while the likes of Camille Paglia criticised it heavily. Today, greater than half a dozen books later...
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12 Aug

Permanently bloated? Manual lymphatic drainage is perhaps the cure

Permanently bloated? Manual lymphatic drainage is perhaps the cure
If there’s one thing the wellness world is obsessive about, it’s detoxing. There isn't any shortage of cleanses or products that promise to eliminate all the toxins in your body, so it’s unsurprising that a  style of massage that guarantees to “drain” your body of poisons is growing in popularity: manual lymphatic drainage (MLD).  Your lymphatic system is a network of organs, vessels, ducts, and nodes that move lymph (a fluid made up of white blood cells, proteins and fats) out of your tissues into your bloodstream, eliminating waste and toxins – it’s sometimes called your body’s own sewage system (sexy). The thought is that by massaging your lymph nodes, manual lymphatic drainage supposedly stimulates the lymphatic system and accelerates the...
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