AM I UGLY? - NOWNESS

ASSISTANT SET DESIGNER

Set Designer - CIARAN BEALE

Director - MARIE SCHULLER

Commissioning Director - RAVEN SMITH

Styling - CHRISTOPHER MAUL

Hair - ROKU ROPPONGI

Make-up - ARIEL YEH

DOP - FRANKLIN DOW

Define Beauty: Am I Ugly?

Highlighting the distorted nature of contouring culture

For her contribution to the latest series of Define Beauty, London-based director Marie Schuller has turned to the dark depths of the web, holding up a mirror to strange cultural occurrences that have become the everyday. In a new film, Am I Ugly?, the filmmaker highlights the pressure placed on young girls and women to meet an unrealistic and unvaried standard of beauty.

“Schuller highlights the pressure placed on young women to meet an unrealistic and unvaried standard of beauty”

In a world littered with images of everything from a contoured Kim Kardashian to vlogger tutorials teaching you how to reshape your face, it begs the question: are these body-altering processes warping our ideals of how a woman should look? Or is the contouring trend a move towards further agency, as its roots in the drag scene might suggest?

“Are these body-altering processes warping our ideals of beauty?”

Drawing on a YouTube format that sees young girls posing the

questions, “am I pretty?” or “am I ugly?” to anyone who wants to

watch, Schuller cast pre-teen girls engaging in extreme cosmetic

techniques in order to present her provocative point at face value.