Artist Gracie Hagen‘s project Illusions of the Body explores the distance between media-propagated imagery of men and women with impossibly pristine bodies, and the genuine very-imperfect reality of our own flesh.

Hagen photographed her “normal” models in two separate poses. In the first, they took conventionally sexy poses that accentuated the parts they themselves thought acceptable, while hiding sections they considered unattractive. In the second frame, they struck an unflattering pose.

While Illusions of the Body’ was made to explore the norms that we think our bodies are supposed to look like, to us it gives a more powerful message: That it is HOW we hold ourselves, whether proud or sheepish, that has power convey beauty. The collapsed, ashamed-seeming poses HIDE the very beauty that is already there.

Gracie Hagen
Gracie Hagen

It made us think if Ann Cuddy’s GREAT TED talk How Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are, which we posted about a while ago, and its surprising central principle for  how to make your self powerful.

via Huffington Post

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