you're beautiful

Interesting after the Rimmel mascara pull - if only they knew - well they do now. But it raises really interesting issues about our notions of beauty which have probably completely been overtaken by the photo- or cine- genic. There is something we recognise as beauty (wherever that comes from) when we come across it in the real world, and it can be very disconcerting - I always suspect it is because we can't stop our pupils dilating and it becomes too revealing of us, our desire too naked and embarrassingly Pavlovian, and uncomfortably cross gender. Really there is no need for photographic models to be beautiful in that sense any more and even the beautiful are retouched to the point almost of unrecognisability - so will the successful models become those whose facial structure lends itself to retouching - the new definition of photogenic? After all the old photogenic is often almost unrecognisable to the non-expert, being to do with the 'laws' governing the translation of facial planes into a photograph, and has little to do with 'real world' beauty. And will there be a premium on 'real world' beauty and if so how will we know it if we only ever see retouched images or 'debunking' ones like pap shots? Reality beauty? Or will 'real' beauty become like glamour, or whatever we call that aura of celebrity that can only truly be experienced first hand - as an extreme sport perhaps? Sadly what is most likely is that it will all be as subject to disavowal as anything that interferes with our fantasies ever was - "I know but nevertheless".