Seeing Beauty in Difference

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project  -- “difference” meaning departure from the qualities of the established, aesthetic norm. The initiative will draw from visual art and design and cultural studies to develop two platforms on the IRAAA+ webzine to address the perception of “African ugliness.”  

“Seeing Beauty in Difference” will demonstrate the art of appreciating the aesthetic attributes of forms that deviate from conventional norms.   Most visual artists see in this way. So do all people with a cultivated appreciation for art.  To artists and art connoisseurs, originality, uniqueness and the ability of a form to evoke interest and fascination is more aesthetically pleasing than the banal prettiness of, say, a conventionally-rendered painting of a bowl of fruit. 

A more sophisticated perceptual ability can help young people who are struggling with self-image and self-esteem develop personal aesthetics and appearances based on their own uniqueness. For those who are artistically inclined, this evolved perceptual ability will further encourage them to formally project themselves original, personal art. Visual literacy will serve the target population in other ways as well as it removes the scrim of social conditioning from their perception and permits them to see everything  -- not just themselves -- in fresh, new, revealing ways.  This pathway through visual literacy to social acceptance and self acceptance will contribute to a reinvigoration of black communities. This project also will have consequences and set precedents that extend far beyond black communities.

Seeing Beauty in Difference will develop two interactive platforms on the IRAAA+ webzine:  a workshop platform and an outreach platform.  The workshop platform will facilitate the exchange of information and ideas on formulating and propagating a pluralistic aesthetic for black feminine beauty.  Workshop participants will include visual artists, arts professionals such as museum curators, and scholars.  They will grapple with the confounding aspects of how to develop a philosophy of beauty for application in the situation of diversity that is the broad range of appearance of African Diaspora people.  

The workshop participants also will grapple with how to heal the deeply ingrained, psychological and social dysfunction resulting from the association of blackness with human physical ugliness (and also its association with rot, moral degeneration, evil, etc.).  And they will formulate the principles of a pluralistic aesthetic and create beauty strategies and icons based on it.

These formulations will not be easy because there can be no singular conception of a “black aesthetic” that can fit all African-descended people. So, for example, while a hair weave is generally thought to be workable beauty strategy for Beyonce’s mixed-heritage appearance and a playful, even witty “black Barbie doll” parody in Nicki Minaj’s persona, it may appear to be an ineffective and contradictory beauty strategy for women with a more un-mixed African appearance. Moreover, hair weaving may appear to be an ineffective strategy for women like Beyonce, if they feel that they must go through their lives entirely dependent on faux hair. Most beauty regimens are based on various degrees of grooming, augmentation and artifice. Among other things, our proposed project will sort out what modifications of appearance are effective and promote the well-being of the individual and the group.

There are some broadly shared physical attributes among African-descended people and aesthetic principles can be based on these attributes.  One of the challenges of the Seeing Beauty in Difference workshop participants will be to develop a multifaceted aesthetic philosophy and beauty strategies that not only fit the diverse phenotypes of black girls and women, but also their global, 21st century experience. 


The outreach platform will convey, demonstrate and implement the information and ideas generated by the experts and others in the workshop platform. This content will be interesting and appealing to black women and girls around the world and to all people who are interested in topics such as seeing in new ways and the art of seeing; the philosophy of aesthetics; gender studies, African American studies and cultural studies, in general; visual art and popular culture. 

The content on the outreach platform will include archival photographs such as the one of the South African women cited above, reproductions of artwork that looks different or even strange to the uninitiated eye but that are considered to be masterpieces, icons of beauty that is different and unique, and various kinds of print matter drawn from the materials developed by the expert panel in the workshop.

The project’s outreach activities will include:

an art contest to create an image expressing the “Seeing Beauty in Difference” concept. The winning art work or graphic will be reproduced on one side of a postcard-sized card. The other side of the card will list the initial principles of the aesthetic manifesto developed in the workshop. The card will prominently include the URL for the project website. In addition to providing information, the card will be a beautiful and intriguing keepsake item. The work of all of the contest finalists, as well as the work of the winner, will be posted on the project’s outreach web platform.

an invitation to women and girls to critique the aesthetic manifesto developed by the expert panel in the workshop, add their own comments as appendices to the manifesto, and vote on the final manifesto.

an invitation to girls and women around the world to participate in the “Seeing Beauty in Difference” challenge by either developing a well-fitting beauty strategy of their own and sharing their experience with the project community and/or working with another woman to do so.

In hosting an interactive medium that will elicit responses from the population it seeks to serve, the “Seeing Beauty in Difference” initiative will have an inherent way to test its effectiveness. The outcomes that we envision are: 1) the formulation a pluralistic philosophy of personal beauty; 2) the promotion of healing for women who have been adversely affected by a hegemonic beauty standard; 3) the adoption of new beauty strategies by these women, and 4) the promotion of general public awareness about the problem. These are measureable, material outcomes. For example, the new aesthetic philosophy will be codified as a listing of illustrated principles on the web platform and on the card that will be distributed to thousands of women. The healing begins with the adoption

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