Self-Portrait: Anti-Glam

The beautiful people, the beautiful people
It’s all relative to the size of your steeple
You can’t see the forest for the trees
You can’t smell
Your own shit on your knees
Hey you, what do you see?
Something beautiful, something free?

For week two of this month’s Glam Self-Portrait Challenge, my original plan was to create an Anti-Glam photo ala Marilyn Manson. I really respect Manson as an artist who forces people to re-examine cultural symbols: the church, beauty, gender roles, good, evil, you name the icon and Manson is tweaking, morphing, and recreating it in an original innovative fashion. I am not a huge of fan of his music, although I do like most of his songs that I have heard, but rather, I love the fact that he is constantly challenging people’s idea of what they think art is, and what is or isn’t dirty or obscene. He has an innate ability to push buttons and make people feel uncomfortable. I like that in an artist. Furthermore, he is articulate, intelligent, and down to earth when he is not in character. I have known for years that he has written a book, but I have never actually read it. After this little homage to the man, I may finally read it.

After searching for some images of Manson on the Internet, I was surprised to realize that he is actually quite beautiful. I was looking for some nasty animal-like image of him defiling our society’s concepts of beauty, and while I did find a few images of that type, I found more images of him as an androgynous, alien-like geisha, with delicate and futuristic features captivating me image after image. I guess I just feel better knowing that people like Manson exist. Something has to balance out people like John Ashcroft and Bill O’Reily right?

I don’t have much else to say this week. No story. I hope that my photo will do the talking. What started off being my Anti-Glam image has been, with the help of Marilyn Manson, transformed into my homage to Clan of the Cave Bear, meets Bjork, meets Manson, meets a mime, meets me. I hope this photo conveys the sense of freedom and pleasure one derives from covering oneself with make up on a Sunday afternoon in the name of doing something a bit weird because that is what human beings are here to do. Thank you Marilyn Manson for reminding me that no matter how routine or practical our lives may sometimes appear to be, there has to be room for things like this: