Ayşe Kırca : For the Sake of Beauty

The impact of social media today means that being “beautiful” is never enough, leading people to become addicted to aesthetics, including Hollywood and the rest of the world’s obsession with “Ozempic,” “Mounjaro” weight loss injections, the new technological machines emerging daily in the beauty industry, or the use of photo applications like Facetune when these prove insufficient. We are moving far away from loving ourselves, accepting ourselves, and looking as we are. So far away that this obsession with beauty can make many of us look absurd and ridiculous in real life or in the digital world.

We live in a world where being beautiful, handsome, and young has always been valued. These terms, whose definitions vary depending on who you ask and what you ask for, push us to change ourselves. Beauty contests are one example. These are superficial competitions held all over the world, where a jury selects the most beautiful contestants from among that year’s participants and crowns them with titles such as “world beauty” or “universe beauty.” Photoshopped brand advertisements, people on social media who have taken on an appearance unrelated to themselves, celebrities who appear in their most perfect form on social media, reality shows, and beauty contests that continue today are turning everyone into each other, even turning them into monkeys.

The damage inflicted on the modern individual by a homogenized, polished, and standardized perception of beauty. First, we were sanded down to serve this perception of beauty, from our outer appearance to our lips, hips, and breasts. Then, over time, we turned into monkeys cut from the same mold, even in our inner worlds, our tastes, and our aesthetic perceptions. As humanity evolved to differentiate itself and leave a mark on this world, this uniform aesthetic and perception of beauty fueled a reverse evolution, distancing us from humanity and putting us on the path back to our simian ancestors. This series is actually a critique of the aesthetic perception imposed on modern humans, who have become monotonous and lost the diversity and harmony that is the essence of humanity in the name of beauty.