The Cult of Beauty

 

Before we went off to the theatre this week we dropped into the new exhibition at the Wellcome Collection.  

Taking a fairly fragmented look at the changing cultural ideas of beauty, the beauty industry and the strange and sometimes wonderful things people do and have done to their bodies for the sake of it, it was an interesting hour or so.  

I was particularly taken by the exhibits looking at how we learn what is beautiful, and particularly how to do makeup, which nowadays seems to be through Tiktok or Youtube, but in the dark ages when I was young was probably through Jackie and Cosmopolitan.   And the relationship between personal conceptions of beauty and how they are intertwined with our identities gave me quite a lot of food for thought.

My favourite of all though was (Almost) all of my dead mother's beautiful things by Narcissister.  I dread to think of what my treasures would look like if displayed in a similar way.