Madison Avenue has worked hard to convince ordinary women that they are not beautiful, and that only Photoshopped anorexic models are worthy of public display. The “Nu Project” set out to photograph ordinary women, in the nude, in a way that displays their natural beauty. I saw this article on Huffpo and just clicked in to see how I would react. Although I didn’t react the same way to each of these photos, I found this project compelling for the reasons stated by the creators:
[Photographer Matt Blum] sees the photos as filling a void. “When I started shooting nudes there was no project like it,” he told The Huffington Post in an email. “The things that I had seen either used models with typical model bodies or average people who were made to look extremely unimpressive. I figured there was a way to treat women (of any size/shape) like models and photograph them beautifully, respectfully without a lot of sexual under or overtones.”
“Madison Avenue has worked hard to convince ordinary women that they are not beautiful….” I think about this topic every time I’m standing in line at the grocery store, and I’m surrounded on both sides by walls of magazines that are doing exactly what this post is about. I imagine how I would feel if, instead, the same messages were aimed at men. It gives me a sick feeling. I can’t imagine how women feel when they are continuously bombarded by this garbage from every media source in existence. If it is true that women suffer depression more than men, perhaps this is one of the reasons why.