We Mimic Things We Find Beautiful

I observed flowers in lipstick advertisements, sandy dessert and beetles in eye shadow posters. What are they doing here, in the every-inch-counts commercial visual? And why do they speak to me even stronger than the brand’s product or model? Following this initial inspiration, my Thesis aims to understand the ethic of facial self-reinvention that animated nonhuman figures, and from here to discuss a practical potential in cosmetics advertising, suggesting using visual metaphors to repackage makeup into a self-actualization tool, in which way its inclusiveness can be extended.

Why does one want to become another? And how this could happen?I started with a personal experiment of facial transformation using cosmetic rules and makeup products as tools:

“Dad, do you want to be a fish?”

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My dad is a man in his late 50s. He never touched and will touch makeup, except to buy lipsticks for my mom.

My dad has always been curious about and appreciating animals. Especially fish. He can sit In front of a fish tank for hours, just seeing them, saying fish is a beautiful creature, strong, fluent, closely united with family, free and emotional.

Has my dad, an aging man spent half of his lifetime closely tied up in human society, ever pictured himself to be a fish, swimming beautifully and strongly?

Transformation process: materialize (cut and rebuild with plaster）

Transformation process: cosmetics as tools (I used my foundation, setting powder, lipstick gel, eye liner and fake eyelashes to realize the two intermediate transformation faces from my dad to a fish）

I want to discuss a practical potential in cosmetics advertising, suggesting using visual metaphors instead to repackage it into a self-actualization tool. Do we really need beauties and product descriptions to empathize with using makeup?

My book has two narratives:

Frontside is about the figures in mirror, the fantasy and desire to become another when using makeups;

Backside is about the experiment documentation of “dad, do you want to be a fish?”