The Authenticity in the Use of Monstruous Beauty in Fashion Imagery

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Authenticity in the use of monstrous beauty in fashion imagery: Real change or Freak Show? Aitziber Iragui Abstract: In the last years, the use in fashion imagery of monstrous beauty or bodies that transgress the standards of normative, has increased remarkably. These new trends seem to be the beginning of the end, for the hegemony of the actual beauty standards, well established and maintained by the power of the media. The aim of this paper was to support the idea of this new trend in fashion imagery and the media, as a sign of authenticity because of its innovation and cut off with the traditional beauty standards. However during my research, some interesting information lead me to think about other possibilities for this to happen. Is that inclination a real break down on the dictatorship of the current beauty myth in the media, or is it just a new version of the Victorian Freak Show? Having established the reason for this new point of view, this essay will now explore and argue between the exhibition of monstrous beauty as a new cultural guideline or just such an ordinary freak show for entertainment of the masses. * * * * * * * “They are back, and they are here. Right in front of our houses, under our beds. The others, the monsters. They are everywhere and all escape routes are closed”. (Van der Beek, 2011:1). The monsters have been a very important part of the history of mankind. They can be found since the ancient Greek mythology in creatures such as a Centaur, who had the head and torso of a man and the body of a horse, in the Renaissance in shape of a Cyclops, men with one eye in the centre of their faces, or nowadays such as Cyborgs, half human, half machine. “The most common source of the word “monster” came from the Latin word monstrae, to point out, to exhibit. Jeffrey, J, Cohen

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