How Body Art Speaks To the Construction or Perception of Gender and Beauty
Body art such as tattoos, scarification, body paint, and moulds among other forms of human body art represent gender, social status, or beauty. This practice was common in the ancient times. Most people in the ancient times used their body as a media for creating and passing message to the greater public. Different forms of body art portrayed different meaning to the public. Different gender groups also used different body art design; art design meant for the masculine gender only applied to them and the ones meant for feminine gender also only applied to them (Sepp et al, 2010).
Beauty and Perception Represented By Body Art
People in the ancient times used art to express beauty to those who understand, this is because what one person considers as beautiful another person may despise. The feminine gender, which in the traditional setting referred to women, used arts to express and show beauty. They used body art examples such as body paints and moulds to show and express beauty. Rarely did the feminine gender, females, use body scarification or tattoos for expressing beauty. This only applied in cases of traditional ritual requirement where it was mandatory to undergo such process. People’s perception on the use of body art form by women represented beauty (Jones and Amelia, 2007).
On the other hand, the masculine gender used body form art for a number of reasons. These reasons included to show social status, courage, and beauty. Some forms of body for instance; some tattoos represented certain social class status. This means that only people from certain social class could get them. They also used art to portray beauty. These occurred mostly during celebrations such as weddings ceremonies and childbirth ceremonies among other ceremonies where people gathered to celebrate happiness. Masculine gender, males mostly used tattoos and body scarification forms of body art to portray beauty (Jones and Amelia, 2007).
From the discussions it is evident that ancient persons used different forms of body art to portray beauty. People’s perceptions on art use also varied from one individual to another. What one person viewed as beautiful another person may have despised.
Work cited
Jones, Amelia. Body Art/performing the Subject. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007. Print.
Sepp, Hans R, and Lester E. Embree. Handbook of Phenomenological Aesthetics. Dordrecht: Springer, 2010. Print.
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