A serious Leica collector I love forwarded an article from their blog that makes you think. It features these beautiful black and white portraits of young gorgeous women with pre-operative marks on their faces before procedures they’ve undergone in the pursuit of “perfection.” They are subjects of a photo exhibit Mask of Perfection by Marc Erwin Babej, with Maria M. LoTempio, MD. From the Artist’s Statement:
Mask of Perfection focuses on the complex and ambivalent relationship between the beauty we perceive subjectively on the one hand, and the plastic surgeon’s scientific, geometry- based standard of beauty on the other.
The currently emerging ideal of beauty is unprecedented in that it is actionable, and that conformity to it has become widely available. Lips like Angelina Jolie; breasts like Scarlett Johansson; a butt like Kim Kardashian; less slanted eyes like a white woman; a wrinkle-free complexion like a cosmetics model? Available at a plastic surgeon near you. In other words, the emerging beauty ideal not only reflects changing taste, but represents a radical shift in the understanding of beauty itself. Conformity to an ideal of beauty used to be a daydream; now, it has become a line item on a shopping list. Whether this development is liberating or cheapens the concept of human beauty (or both at the same time) is a matter of individual judgment.
Click on “Leave a Comment” to share who decides what’s perfect for you.
xoxox
Powerful Goddess Portraits 
Jun 21, 2013 @ 09:38:18
The mask of perfection is precisely that…a mask…something to hide behind. I have said it before and have always thought it, I love you the way you are. I don’t look at a woman and think what would I change about her. Not even a woman I may only see once in passing. If a man looks at a woman and says your beautiful “but” there needs to be a change, the man. It’s interesting to me, I never really looked at women as art in that sense of the word until I happened upon PGP. Now I totally enjoy and have learned something new about me; that is, I love the beauty of a woman as individual works of art that is inherent in all women. The photos here show me that we worry to much about detail of imperfection that is in us all. Fix it if you must, but know that in my eyes my love, I’m not perfect but you are.
Thank you, Sharky for sharing your and others art.
The last photo is my favorite less the unnecessary marks to adjust for symmetry.
Mountain
Jun 26, 2013 @ 12:02:40
And fortunate are the women you adore with your loving eyes, Mountain!
xoxox