I’m Looking at You. You Are Beautiful.
Felix, good friend of Progressive Wednesday, introduced me to the You Are Beautiful project many, many years ago, and, I’m glad to see that it’s still going strong. What is You Are Beautiful? It is, in the project’s own words:
a simple, powerful statement which is incorporated into the over absorption of mass media and lifestyles that are wrapped in consumer culture. The intention behind this project is to reach beyond ourselves as individuals to make a difference by creating moments of positive self realization. We’re just attempting to make the world a little better.
Intention is the most important aspect of the You Are Beautiful project in its idea of purity. Nothing is sacred. Everything that has a perceived value becomes commodified. We work extremely hard that this message is received as a simple act of kindness, and nothing more.
Advertising elicits a response to buy, where this project elicits a response to do something. The attempt with You Are Beautiful is to create activism instead of consumerism.
How is this achieved? Well, for example, if you send an SASE to the folks at You Are Beautiful you’ll receive five free stickers that say as much on them. Then, you’re encouraged to place those stickers in open, surprising places to spread what amounts to a true, often forgotten, and powerful positive message. Click this sentence to find out how to get a hold of your own stickers.
It goes further than that, though. You Are Beautiful frequently takes part in collaborations with individuals and groups. The only caveat is that this simple message should be spread by any means except through commercialism. That means no t-shirts, mugs, calendars, etc. Nothing to sell. No product are to be created to give away, even if they are to be given free of charge. They’re pretty serious about this.
We work extremely hard to not let this project become commodified or commercialized. We have respectfully turned down every commercial opportunity that has been offered. We feel for this particular message, it would water down the mission. We have several copyrights in place to protect ourselves, and limit its use to solely noncommercial projects.
The aforementioned Felix (he’s been keeping an interesting, engaging, content-rich blog going since 2002) worked on a collaborative project with You Are Beautiful. The project, You Are I Am, is an “exploration of repetition and variation.” He describes the process of creating this Flash-based experiment on his website: “Participants were given a sticker labeled ‘I Am,’ followed by a blank. After filling out their phrase, each person was then photographed. It was often surprising how much you could tell about the person… based on how they described themselves.” You can read even more about the process by clicking here.
Friends (and I’m not just saying this because you’re reading this website, but, you know, it doesn’t hurt anything)… friends, you are beautiful.
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