Thursday, December 3, 2009

ambiguous is beautiful

6 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This one sets off my brain's propaganda alarms, same as the phrase "Thin is beautiful" would.

    I respect the message you're trying to get across, but don't tell people what they should find beautiful.

    That's the advertising industry's job.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think this is more along the lines of a poster saying "fat is beautiful" (rather than "thin is beautiful"). It's telling us that not only extreme femininity and extreme masculinity are appealing, as the media would have us believe. In other words I think it's opposing the ad industry and the male/female standards shown in propaganda.

    I can understand that you don't want to be told what type of people you "should" find beautiful, but I don't think that's the intent. It's more aimed at people who would never see the beauty in gender ambiguity on their own.

    ReplyDelete
  4. not to nitpick, but if the other is "beauty is ambiguous", shouldn't this one be "ambiguity is beautiful"?

    lovely poster, though, and i like the idea if not the grammar

    ReplyDelete
  5. @anon: Yeah, I was thinking that as I wrote it... I don't know, it sounded better this way? Haha.

    ReplyDelete
  6. @Jeff: Skyler already responded for me, but yeah, that's what I was getting at. Ambiguity tends to be stigmatized and othered, and I wanted to somehow express that it could be beautiful too.

    @Skyler: You say it better than I can.

    ReplyDelete