by Melissa Ulto

When exactly did feminism divorce itself from femininity? As a child of the 70's, I grew up with conflicting images of beauty and power. What was intrinsically feminine was also the source of inequality. Beauty was not included in the modes of seeming liberated. Beauty seemed decadent, irrelevant, frivolous - clearly not the stuff of serious feminists fighting the good fight. From the braless, natural and makeup free women of my childhood, the androgynous explorations of the late 70's/early 80's, to finally the juxtaposition of the shoulder pad masculinity and in-your-face sexuality of my teens. By the time I hit 20, I had seen women reduce and reform their roles, wherein beauty was not essential. In the 90's beauty became classified and commodified, a panoply of ethnicities and cultures were borrowed from, in cosmetic imagery, without being included on anything but a surface level. Somehow, nations and generations became unknowing parts of the exquisite corpse of gender and sexual definitions, the result a patchwork of disjointed iconography and unrealistic expectations. None of these being whole or entirely wrong, all seeking further clarification.

In the early 1990's I began my own artistic investigations into beauty, power and all things feminine. What did it mean to be "pretty", "beautiful", "sexy"? How did it differ from being "powerful", "equal", "liberated"? Here was the crux of the argument - beauty equaled sexual availability, desire and to be desired. It did not, however, equal being powerful. Somehow, this seemed to belie the obvious pop culture and historical depictions of sexualized women.

From age-old notions of the jezebel, the whore, culturally it is understood that women who embrace their sexuality are outsiders with the ability to fully engage in the sensual aspects of life. The polar opposite, the Madonna, the saint, is a passive aggressive woman who in her sacrifices and suffering, wields the power of guilt and restraint. How did the sexualized women become the outsider in a movement that defined itself as freeing women's bodies, from unwanted reproduction to birth control? Were these merely ideas that in practice the women's liberation movement was, internally, still too puritanical to really embrace? Is it a case of "the lady doth protest too much"?

In this split infinity, women struggle to understand the strictures of society, both patriarchal and self-inflicted, while men, similarly hindered, stand to the sidelines, mute and armless. The rise of mass media and self-commodified stars further confuse the lines of sexuality, gender and power.

What is power? The ability to perform and act with effect, faculty, aptitude? In being a woman, where do we now find this inability, in regards to sexuality? The expectations of marriage, sex and relationship are too disparate to follow and consequently creates a confused individual who hears pop psychology and modern feminists at odds with each other. Who should a woman be true to - her own urges, cultural expectations or to her gender?

In my artistic explorations, I looked at mid-century pulp culture iconography, as well as cyber culture and fetish. I found women fully sexualized in subculture from the 1940's onward seemed to be much more in tune with their inherent power. Of course, this was offset with deviance to frighten off Middle America, always eager to keep to the middle of the road in all things sexual and gender related. When fetish became a focus of mass media in the 80's/90's, its sexual wickedness dissipated. What happens when subversive becomes mainstream?

In my work, I continually investigate how beauty in and of itself is powerful. Beauty, in the most natural sense of the word, has the ability to captivate the mind, engage the imagination. In regards to women and beauty, I have found that being beautiful is not merely a societal dictate, but the presentation of qualities delighting the senses, is primal and very powerful. Beauty is a multi-sensory experience, in which the aesthetic impact is one of momentary transcendence beyond the mundane. The very word beautiful has been misused to mean solely the province of visual loveliness, while it's actual meaning includes delighting the intellectual, emotional and physical senses, an admiration of what is a comprehensive, perhaps even pure, object, idea or experience. In its misuse, the word has been deflated, in ways, degraded to mean the very shallowest forms of pretty, comely, lovely, directed solely at the sense of vision. When one says something is beautiful, its impact does not carry the weight of its meaning. So what word do we use or can we reclaim the word, the meaning and the experience of "beautiful"?

Herein we find the levels of what is presented in my work as beautiful to include other meanings. Provocative, sexual, sensual, witty, intelligent; all these meanings plus the intangible connection that the photography, video and writing makes with the user of my work. Making a cultural connection by the use of artifice and the mechanics of role, I use these tools to carry deeper meanings that one might not find comfortable or as palatable on initial examination.

Beauty does not necessarily mean artifice, in which women shoehorn themselves into mass media's definition of the perfect beauty. Delighting the sense of vision means capturing the focus of the viewer. How the senses are focused does not reside on one designation. The multiculturalism of the 90's broadened Western definitions, if merely on the surface.

Artifice in my work tries to engender the differences in beauty, particularly the standard icons of pulp culture and B movies. From here, I present the faces of blondeness, the ideas of the sexualized being in the serious and comedic, the ideas that hair color, clothing type, makeup and setting can drastically highlight the overtly fetish aspects of femininity. By presenting these differences in a sexualized commentary, I in turn take ownership of my own objectification, and confront the user to evaluate the ideas presented. In this ownership, the power of femininity and feminism lies with me. I take hold of feminist empowerment and feminine beauty, melding them into a presentation that is above the concepts of vanity and conceit, into a grander model that is an undivided sexual being, encompassing the many faces of desire. An authoritative model that is not merely about gender entitlement, beauty that is not merely pretty, but an entire spectrum in which the feminine is embraced as a integral part of feministic doctrine.

Melissa Ulto is an interdisciplinary artist who utilizes modern and traditional mediums to create her works. Born in Los Angeles, she grew up in various cities and towns in Northern Ontario. Attending college briefly, Melissa moved to New York in 1991. She began integrating her computer skills with her creative skills and launched her first online exhibit in 1994. Continuing her education, she sought out new methods of showing her pieces, which often involved computers, video, paintings, photography and assemblage. Melissa found the web to be ideal in creating a time/space that engages the audience in both moving and still imagery presentations.

She currently resides in New York, working professionally as a Digital Video Specialist at Columbia University's Center for New Media Teaching and Learning, and continues to pursue her work with her online exhibit, ...unMade Movie... (http://unmade.thecataract.com), as well as her arts and experimental sites, http://www.thecataract.com and http://www.multo.com. She recently showed her work in New York, Chicago and Toronto, and Russia. Her work has gained international attention, and is featured on many online galleries, including Net_Working (University of the West of England), Net4Image, Loop Gallery, Michelle7, PODGallery, Clean Sheets and Erozuna, as well as showing at several film festivals around the country. Her new show, Women I Have Known, was shown at AugustArt 2002. She is also the co-founder the SinCine Erotic Film Fest and curator of AugustArt’s Moving Image Genre 2002 season.