Perfect

2011

Six unconventional beauty contests, in which different categories of women challenge each other, in search of the perfect imperfection. At least if by perfection we mean the standardized beauty, the cult of the beautiful body built on TV, in advertising, among the influencers of social networks, mass-produced for a mass consumption.

Especially in Italy, where beauty and the body have become so powerful in popular culture to be transformed, in the never ending Berlusconi era, in an instrument of consensus. With the aim of creating a mass adulation around a precise idea of humanity - beauty goes with wealth and wealth with power - so as to provoke a mass emulation, naturally destined to failure. As demonstrated by the unprecedented wave of casting and beauty contests for girls and women of all ages. From Miss Italy to showgirls to reality shows: the exhibition of oneself is the greatest aspiration of the homo berlusonianus (who is none other than the contemporary man, who lives on hedonism and consumption or the aspiration to grab them).

Gianni Cipriano's political and social criticism undermines the base of this cultural architecture. Showcasing the idea of beauty of the excluded, each characterized by a dominant color: Miss Chubby, pink; Miss Trans, purple; Miss Mediterranea, yellow; Miss Plastic Surgery, fuchsia; Miss Drag Queen, orange; Miss Over, blue.

Proud, strutting, self-confident - we don't know and we don't need to know if it's for fun or out of conviction - Cipriano's anti-models are a mockery of the hedonism of the TV show, but also a hymn to freedom, because the ideal of perfect beauty is what each of us can find every morning in front of the mirror, rather than in the poisons of mass culture.

Text by Arianna Catania