Faux Selfies: A Mirror of Reflection

Within an artist’s mind, when creating a character, I would argue that there is always a connection between artist and piece. And for this piece, I found my character within my own mind. Eating disorders sometimes take on a persona similar to a different version of ourselves, looking the same but having a different personality. Within this piece, I set out to characterize my eating disorder through these images. In most of the photoshop pieces, I created this safe and eternal place filled with cherubs and angels representing the safety and euphoria and eating disorder can bring. However, the true nature of fairies is being mischievous and borderline evil, as written in children's books. And in this project they are actually convincing my character to become more sick, and the fairies are her destructive thoughts walking her through the motions of slowly dying. I wanted to really express how eating disorders don't initially start in a bad place, and can feel like a good thing for a very long time. It takes stepping away from the mirror to see the destruction around you. In contrast, two of my photoshop pieces show the negative side of eating disorders, the complete loss of reality along with extreme self hatred, and distorted sense of self.  In the black and white piece on the right hand side, I took blog posts from several  ‘pro anorexia” pages, engaging in something called “meanspo” which is to inspire you to lose weight via saying hurtful things. As this is something I used to read as a young teenager, it really sums up the thoughts I’ve experienced.

As for my gifs, I went a different approach, trying to explain more of the mainstream environment of today that encourages eating disorder behavior. Things like instagram models setting unrealistic expectations, or the capaltialistic push for the fast food industry simultaneously push mixed messages of “be thin; eat fast food.” As someone who has a fear of McDonald’s I wanted  to comment on my hell on earth, via its own logo. And the other gifs explain the unrealistic expectations along with a body constantly gaining and losing weight to fit society's expectations.  

Eating disorders are violent and aggressive yet they sometimes live within the most gentle of people. Trying to separate oneself from their eating disorder gets harder over time as it becomes more interwebbed with who you are.