Inkriql Posted November 28, 2019 Share Posted November 28, 2019 Recently, documenting myself for an article, I came up with a statement from the designer Thierry Mugler in which I confessed that, if after abandoning fashion I had transformed his appearance through surgery and bodybuilding until it became unrecognizable, it had been to erase his face and body previous, and in passing everything that entailed. Surgery as a catharsis, as a tabula rasa or as an extreme purification force is one of the central obsessions of transhumanism, which is that theory that states that the body is obsolete and that transforming it is the only way to adapt. Are Snapchat beauty filters a way to make time until the surgeon's bell rings? I don't know if Mugler is very interested in transhumanism, but I do know that he is from the same generation as his compatriot Orlan, an artist who has been reshaping his face for decades to turn him into sculptures through surgical interventions that he films and distributes as pieces of video art Orlan has always been very controversial. So is singer Grimes. This summer Adidas asked her to talk about her care routine and she, naturally, of cyborg, explained that she had just replaced the outer layer of her cornea with a polymer membrane designed by herself and by her boyfriend, the ineffable Elon Musk. The goal, he said, was to filter the blue light to avoid depression. She stayed so wide and oculists from half the world entered the quite to say that it was idiocy. Grimes did not mention it again and we still don't know if his thing was confession or performance. What is clear is that today we are much more receptive to permanently alter our appearance through surgery or through social networks, although I still do not know if one excludes the other. Are Snapchat beauty filters or a way to make time until the surgeon's bell rings? Around the world, celebrities and influencers swarm around their faces to make them look like 3D software renders. I recognize that those faces of minimal (or nonexistent) eyebrows, porcelain lips and slightly alien features due to the work and grace of contouring hypnotize me as Kaa to Mowgli. Sometimes, when I agree with one of them, I think that transhumanism is already here. Other times I opt for an equally attractive theory: that the dolly faces of beauty boys, the cheekbones of the Kardashian and the Tupés and the beards of the Mediaset quarries are cosmetic fashions, such as dark circles and greñas among the romantics of the 19th century or rice powders and wigs among the courtiers of the XVIII. There is a whole thesis on the subject in the Casanova de Fellini. Donald Sutherland, the protagonist actor, caught an anger of fifteen when he saw that they were going to deform his face with prostheses until he made him look like a giant of Burgos. But Fellini convinced him (only halfway) explaining that this was the story of a man unable to live without artifice. Casanova was a son of his time. Like everyone 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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