Mother Pious Lady: Making Sense of Everyday India

By Santosh Desai
Harpercollins

The great Indian middle class is that layer of society that no one bothered about until couple of decades ago. People in this layer did not fall into the category of "have nots," and hence did not attract any sympathy. At the same time they did not have the luxury of "haves," so it did not make any economic sense for the others to target them. They lived in their own world where they had enough for their basic needs, but nothing for their desires. Then came the famous economic reforms of early '90s, which changed the Indian middle class forever.

People in the upper echelons of Indian society probably always had everything, and for the people in the lower rung things have still not have changed much (except they probably have a mobile phone in the hand). But the middle class suddenly had more resources than they were used to. They could afford to buy houses at a much younger age, cars almost at the beginning of their work lives, and clothing without waiting for a wedding to happen in the family. Psychologically, for people who grew up in '70s and early '80s, the change was tremendous. While their growing up was in an era of scarcity, they landed in an era of abundance without really making a proportionate effort. They embraced the change, but also had to deal with their cultural roots that lie in another age. They also became the focus segment for many product and service offerings, which they were not used to, and had to learn to deal with this sudden attention.

In Mother Pious Lady, Santosh Desai makes sometimes nostalgic, random observations about the Indian middle class, about the things that we cherished while growing up that have either been lost or are on the verge of being lost, like postcards, a phone connection, or a black and white television set. He looks at the making of this class and their obsessive need for value often leading to the reuse of stuff for multiple purposes. He slowly looks at how we encountered change, and how the change has changed us. Desai talks about our identity evolving from being family-based to being profession-based, and from being local or regional to global. If you belong to Indian middle class, you will relate to everything the author talks about, like someone is narrating your very own dilemmas and situations. Desai covers personal life, family events, socioeconomic change, professional environment, and just about everything that touches our day-to-day lives.

Mother Pious Lady is a collection of small articles that Desai wrote for the Times of India. I have been an avid reader of his articles, and enjoy his simple insights that most people overlook. However, when it comes in a 380-page book, I expected a bit more depth. The articles become predictive, and as soon as you get thinking on a topic, its over. I would have expected more analysis of the observations he has gathered; while the topics have been categorized, they are too broad. At the very least there could have been a pre- or post-summarization of the topic categories and insights thereof.

One would probably enjoy this book more by not reading it cover-to-cover, but keeping it by your bedside table and randomly picking it up when you have a spare ten minutes.

Review by Anuradha Goyal

Son Preference: Sex Selection, Gender and Culture in South Asia

By Natvej K.Pureval
Berg Publishers

Son Preference is one of the most compelling insights into the issue of sex selection I have read. Written through a scholarly yet personal lens, the author takes reader through the narrative and complexities of culture and gender in South Asia. She brings together key debates on the subject by assessing and critically engaging with existing literature in the field and providing new insights through primary empirical research.

Natvej K.Pureval’s work covers a broad range of social science discussions and draws upon textual and ethnographic material from India. With her work, Pureval invites more studies into the field of sex selection that would raise more questions about the normative backdrop of son preference issue. While son preference is not a new phenomenon, and has existed historically in many parts of Asia, it has recently become an issue of not only local but also global dimensions. The phenomenon exemplifies the gendered outcomes of social power relations as they intersect with culture, technologies, and economics.

While the literature on son preference and sex selection has been primarily concerned with understanding it as a practice, resistance and opposition to it have been more or less analytically ignored. Pureval, thus, examines policy and official anti-female foeticide activism and anti-sex selection movement that has emerged across national boundaries and involves not only feminist activists but also people from health sector and wider society. She also draws on young women thoughts and articulations, which make significant contributions to the understanding of recent and ongoing trends. Pureval demonstrates that women’s voices and attitudes towards son preference are by no means unitary and static, but rather shifting and changing.

Son Preference will be of interest to students, academics, and anyone interested in this contentious issue surrounding gender inequity and sex selection. It provides a valuable addition to the existing literature on this highly sensitive topic, and proposes new directions for ethnographic research and analysis.

Review by Olivera Simic

Entangling Alliances: Foreign War Brides and American Soldiers in the Twentieth Century

By Susan Zeiger
NYU Press

When men are shipped out to foreign locations to engage in wartime activities, it seems inevitable that they will become romantically and sexually involved with foreign women. In Entangling Alliances, Susan Zeiger explores this phenomenon, examining governmental, military, and societal responses to American soldiers’ desires for sex, companionship, and marriage while engaged in combat overseas. She argues that the changing ways Americans treated war brides over the course of the twentieth century demonstrates shifting American sensibilities regarding foreign policy, race, and gender. More than anything, because war brides involved an exchange of women across cultural and national boundaries, American discourse about war brides was ultimately about what constituted American manhood, men’s relationships with women, and the role of the nation in its relationship to other countries.

During World War I, the military preached sexual abstinence while devising methods to keep American soldiers and local women apart, in particular African-American soldiers and white European women. The army’s response to marriage requests vacillated until an official policy was handed down that marriage was a personal, not military, question. Meanwhile, domestic policy concerns in the U.S. triumphed over an internationally-oriented political outlook; xenophobia for newcomers was inevitable and Americans wondered if these foreign women could become good American wives. Though many predicted the demise of these marriages, evidence reveals that the majority made it.

In World War II, military policy differed depending on location. It encouraged marriage in Great Britain and Australia, both Allied countries with similar cultural backgrounds to white middle-class America. Likewise, American society welcomed these brides, suggesting that American women should emulate their domesticity and loyalty to husbands. Alternatively, the military encouraged prostitution, rather than marriage, in both Italy and the Philippines, while American society viewed these war brides as less desirable immigrants. Zeiger argues that both policies—encouraging prostitution or marriage—“shared... the intention to preserve and extend male control over women.” She also points out that though many of these local women showed independence and an assertion of personal freedom by going out with American men, sometimes against their family’s wishes, their stories “end with marriage and dependence.”

Race played a huge role in war bride stories post-WWII and throughout the Korean and Vietnam Wars. Congressional policy actively limited brides from Asian countries, outright barring Japanese spouses for several years, while all interracial couples faced social discrimination and, occasionally, found that their marriages were not legal when they moved from one state to another.

Zeiger argues that the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam saw the “demise” of the war bride as a phenomenon considered and debated by the American public. The military did not provide transport to war brides the way they did in WWI and WWII, and it actively encouraged prostitution rather than marriage, extending its WWII policy of creating red-light districts where prostitutes were regularly examined by medical officials and given “safe” ratings to prevent the spread of venereal disease. Korean and Vietnamese wives were not written about widely in the American press and they have not written about their post-war experiences in America, the way war brides from earlier eras have done. They have been, Zeiger writes, “all but invisible in American culture.” Demographic information suggests that these Asian war brides tend to be isolated, even in comparison to other Asian immigrants though they have sponsored family members to come to the U.S., unlike earlier war brides. Though Asian war brides were an untold story, there was a lot of media attention paid to the mixed-race children left behind in Vietnam and, sometimes airlifted out and brought to the U.S. Zeiger argues that the story of Amerasian children, and the efforts to bring them to the U.S. allowed Americans to re-conceptualize the war, seeing both Amerasian children and American soldiers as victims in the story. “The American nation becomes father and, also, paradoxically, child. Vietnam, the mother, the war bride, is not part of this reconciliation.”

Entangling Alliances is a compelling read, illuminating twentieth century social struggles encountered by men and women on both domestic and foreign soil over questions of gender, race, and nationality. Though Zeiger argues that the war bride phenomenon died out with the Korean and Vietnam wars, clearly, soldiers still took wives and fathered children with Korean and Vietnamese women. More recently, stories of male American soldiers marrying Iraqi women have been exploited in the media. Because Zeiger only covers the period from WWI up through the Vietnam War, she leaves a perplexing question unexplored: What has happened with female soldiers and local men in the conflicts that the U.S. has engaged in the last twenty years? Have female soldiers, like male soldiers, engaged in romantic and sexual conquests with non-U.S. citizens? I suspect their experience has been radically different than their male counterparts.

Review by Jessica Powers

Stance: Ideas about Emotion, Style, and Meaning for the Study of Expressive Culture

By Harris M. Berger
Wesleyan University Press

My critical theory class from university seemed far away when I started reading Harris M. Berger’s study, Stance. In that course, Reception Theory was probably the most difficult one to grasp, with the most theoretically abstract readings, readings for the most part founded in philosophy. Realistically, the world does not know enough about the brain or perception, and cultural context varies considerably from person to person. Joe can like or dislike something but Jane’s tastes are different; subjectivity is the key to this experience, and thus Berger is attempting to explain a very complex phenomenon. To look at subjectivity through reason, what Berger is attempting to do, seems a daunting task.

Harris M. Berger approaches these questions with gusto, however, and for that I must give him credit. His grasp of key intellectuals and their theories are evident in the text. The purpose of his analysis is to explore the larger issues associated with a person‘s “lived experience,” of diverse phenomenon, and especially music. Music is central to Berger’s work as a professor of music and performance studies in Texas.

Luckily for readers, the author is not just diligent about defining the terms he uses but also writes with acuity and finesse. For example, for him “stance is the manner in which the person grapples with a text, performance, practice, or item of expressive culture to bring it into experience.” Stance is a much more elegant word than posture, position or interpretation but all three refer to the work that is done in the reception of an occurrence. Berger is also generous with examples in an attempt to contextualize some of the more complicated passages. The narration of some of his own experiences is quite fascinating, and the first-person perspective, although it contrasts with the very formal philosophical discussion, alleviates our experience of the book.

A word of warning: I believe that Berger’s study would be almost impenetrable to someone who is not an academic (or very well versed in philosophy) because of its philosophical nature and Berger’s phenomenological approach. For neophytes, phenomenology is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as “an approach that concentrates on the study of consciousness and the objects of direct experience.” For this reason, Berger’s book needs to be read with leisure and much concentration. However, if one is willing to make the effort, Berger’s study contains many insights into the multifaceted nature of what Berger calls the “lived experience.”

Review by Sophie M. Lavoie

Becoming Indian: The Unfinished Revolution of Culture and Identity

By Pavan K. Varma
Penguin Books

Pavan K. Varma’s most recent book, Becoming Indian, argues that cultural freedom has eluded formerly colonized nations, specifically India. He sees a need for a cultural revolution in India. Although it reads at times like an extended opinion piece, Varma makes convincing arguments highlighting the importance of reclaiming language, architecture, and art in a way that empowers indigenous knowledge rather than oppressing it. He examines concepts and examples related to language, architecture, and art with regard to modern Indian history, contemporary events, and personal experiences.

Varma believes that the real strength of empires lay in the colonization of minds, and he views modern history as one that has resulted in cultural and ideological consequences. He explores how English has become a tool for upward mobility and questions the cost, as the loss of one’s own language is seen as a gain in India. He uses the example of young people performing Shakespeare in English with no knowledge of theatre in their own languages to illustrate this pervasive ignorance. He also compares the success of writing in English to the sure failure of writing in Indian mother tongues to illustrate a flaw in today’s Indian value systems. Convincingly, he critiques the concept of providing important information, such as health and traffic signs on the highways, in English.

Although India has been independent since 1947, Varma argues that colonialism persists in the realms of language, politics, and self-image. Varma believes that globalization is leading to the desire for a homogeneous identity. To counteract this, he believes it is important to know one’s cultural roots in order to move forward into the future.

From a feminist perspective, it is interesting to note the ways in which the British have historically seen Indians as effeminate, and thus treated them with less respect. The power dynamics within post-colonial societies are especially tricky as colonization has already permeated people’s minds. According to Varma’s arguments, what may be necessary is not only a contemporary Indian cultural revolution but also one that involves all sectors of society, from the lowest to the highest castes and socioeconomic backgrounds.

Review by Lakshmi Saracino

Babies

Directed by Thomas Balmès
Focus Features



I just got back from seeing the documentary Babies. I have to say that it was great! Director Thomas Balmès followed four babies from four countries for a little over a year each. The movie is mostly without dialogue, except for the little bit of the parents' talking. It is mostly shot from the baby's level, and is organized by the developmental stages of babies' lives. This choice was a great way to highlight each culture and keep the movie flowing.

I really enjoyed seeing the differences in parenting and lifestyles. I found Ponijao, the baby from Namibia, to be the most interesting. The parenting style there was extremely community oriented, though men seemed to have no place in parenting there. This collective parenting made it hard to tell who the baby's mother was through much of the movie.

Bayar, from Mongolia, lives on a family farm. It's amazing to see how closely he grows up with the animals and how he is given a lot of freedom. It's also interesting that his parents seem to take a very removed roll. Although the mother is an active parent at times, Bayar tends to be left to his own devices or with a slightly older sibling.

Japanese Mari was raised in a very Western manner, with her mother taking her to prearranged play dates and having her interact with toys produced by the baby industry. In California, Hattie grows up with a ton of toys and books. She goes to organized baby-centered activities, but otherwise is very solitary. Out of all the babies' fathers, Hattie's seems to be the most involved in his child's life.

Babies does a great job of staying silent; there is no voice-over commentary or focus on the parents apart from when they are interacting with their child. That said, I think the filmmaker intended to create a discussion about parenting, but Babies could easily act as a way to create an Other by creating a divide between Western and non-Western worlds. Although it shows how babies are similar overall, cultural and economic divisions and not providing context and commentary makes it too easy to view those from non-Western cultures as outsiders.

When watching the film, it's hard to remember that these are sample sizes of one, which makes it easy to critique the parenting style of, say, the Japanese parents because there are more than a few scenes of Mari being crabby. But she could easily have colic or be teething or it could just be a result of her parents' individual style, not a reflection of Japanese society as a whole. Similarly, Babies makes it seem as though this Mongolian family is completely removed from parenting, when it could be the economic pressures they face that creates a need for both of Bayar's parents to work.

I noticed some negative reactions in the theater. The film shows breastfeeding, which elicited a small gasp from another patron, and there were also some inappropriate reactions to the children in two of the cultures who were regularly without pants. I think these reactions tell a lot about Americans biases, and how these negative views make natural choices difficult for many mothers.

Other than these few things, Babies was amazing. I'd definitely suggest it to anyone who has an interest in children or parenting. I would just make sure the person understands that these are glimpses into the lives of individuals, and while the people featured may represent a part of their culture, they are not necessarily representative of the culture as a whole.

Review by Cheryl Friedman

Cross-posted at Squirrely Mama

Healing Pandora: The Restoration of Hope and Abundance

By Gail Thomas
North Atlantic Books

The mythic Pandora has long been misunderstood as one who brought evil into the world. She was thought to be the first mortal woman created and sent to Earth by the gods. Her infamous box, once opened, leads to the escape of diseases and other ills, resulting in a lasting curse upon humankind.

But this is not Pandora’s original story; in fact, the modern retelling of this myth is vastly different from Pandora’s true nature. In Healing Pandora, author Gail Thomas explores the origins of the Pandora myth, how it evolved into the tale we accept today, and Pandora’s influence on our culture.

Thomas asserts that long before Pandora’s myth became twisted, she inhabited the role of a goddess. Pandora was not just any goddess. She was the Earth Mother and maker of “all things, all gods, and all mortals.” But like many other female figures (historical or mythical), Pandora’s role as life giver transformed into one who bestows misfortune upon the world, and men in particular.

The first half of Healing Pandora takes a thorough look at the goddess and the vessel she carries, while in the second half, Thomas focuses on how people can apply Pandora’s lessons to modern culture. Thomas describes Pandora as “an archetypal image of culture, an image no longer in the consciousness of our world today.” She invites the reader to consider Western culture as a living entity and describe its appearance. The author bets the image would be one of “competition and scarcity.” By viewing culture through the Pandora myth, however, Thomas states that we will find “a bountiful feminine figure with outstretched arms and hands, waiting to provide everything we need.” The latter outlook seems most assuredly a rarity for Westerners.

Some solutions Thomas offers for transforming culture include women and men embracing their feminine side and also to become true stewards of the earth who recognize that spirit exists in all matter. She also suggests considering how different the world would appear to each of us if we imagined it as a bountiful place instead of one that is always deficient in some way or another.

Of course with a book titled Healing Pandora one would expect the author to spend some time analyzing myth. Thomas does this and takes liberty by discussing Pandora and many other mythic figures in great detail, so much that it’s difficult to keep track of the book’s main purpose. On the other hand, she does raise many valuable and thought-provoking insights toward culture today that are worth contemplating, and Thomas provides a much-needed background of Pandora before her myth became corrupted.

Review by Beverly Jenkins-Crockett

A Tortilla Is Like Life: Food and Culture in the San Luis Valley of Colorado

By Carole M. Counihan

University of Texas Press



From the time Laura Esquivel’s well known novel Like Water for Chocolate was made into a film, food and meals have been presented as a means of communication that extends beyond the dinner table. A Tortilla Is Like Life is an excellent book about Hispanic food, recipes, and home remedies.



A Tortilla Is Like Life is an introduction to the unique Hispanic community of Antonito in San Luis Valley of Colorado. This small urban centre with a population of approximately 900 has Spanish, Mexican, and American Indian ancestry with some Anglophone influences. The town of Alamola, thirty miles away with a population ten times the size of Antonito, provides employment for people from nearby communities.



Carole Counihan, an anthropologist who settled in Antonito with her husband and two sons, presents the culture of the community by gathering food-centred interviews between 1996 and 2006 from nineteen women ages thirty-two to ninety-four, making fifty-five interviews in total. Two women in particular play a major role by providing information about the food, traditions, and culture of Antonito. The most active participants in Counihan’s study were Helen Ruybal, born in 1906, who she interviewed nineteen times, and Teddy Madrid, born in 1936, who was interviewed six times.



In this small community, gender arrangements surrounding cooking have changed over the years along with the archetype of the Chicano patriarchal family. Food sits at the heart of the household, contributing to the structure of families. A woman who prepares food is seen as the head of the family, and women construct relationships with men through cooking. Given that many women sell prepared food to make a living, domestic duties belong to both husband and wife. Through food, women establish a sense of their own identity, culture, and place in society. They create stories about food to preserve their legacy for future generations.



Certain foods encapsulate memories, rituals, beliefs, and traditions. Two things that are central to the Antonito diet (for both flavour and tradition) are red and green chilis, which are eaten on numerous occasions—with extended families, during birth rituals, at one's wedding, and after death—as they communicate love, nurturing, and care.



Counihan wants to enrich the understanding of Antonito’s history by presenting diverse women’s voices and creating a cultural mosaic revealing how they relate to food and community. She classifies her book as testimonio and has done a very thorough job researching. A Tortilla Is Like Life deals very well with the sense of cultural belonging felt by those living in a community where women’s identity is shaped by food.



Review by Anna Hamling

Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes

By Elizabeth Bard
Little, Brown and Company

While the memoir fad is nothing new, Elizabeth Bard’s new book confirms the emergence of a memoir subgenre to contend with: the memoir with recipes. In May 2009, the New York Times proclaimed these books as the brainchild of the “money-making imagination of the publishing industry.” Certainly, a spate of globe-spanning titles have followed, many born from blogs. However, the story of the American in Paris has long been a favored literary subject. It has sparked writers’ imaginations from Henry James to Anais Nin to Elaine Dundy to David Sedaris. Elizabeth Bard’s adventures in Paris have a more chick-lit feel to them than even Nin or Dundy, and have a liberal sprinkling of Julia Child and Peter Mayle throughout. In this recipe-infused book, Bard navigates a long-distance relationship with a French archivist, decides to move to Paris, and eventually gets married and builds her writing career.

At first, Elizabeth Bard’s life seems impossibly charmed, complete with buying the perfect apartment on the increasingly trendy Rue Oberkampf and negotiating cultural differences that seem more endearing and eye-opening than frustrating. However, what sets Bard’s writing apart from others of her nascent genre is her thoughtfulness and realism. She paints a very true and convincing portrait of herself as a driven, New York striver, bent on academic, artistic, and financial success at an early age and agonizing over why it has not yet arrived. While she is highly educated, she does not come from a place of easy breezy privilege, and in between recipes inspired by fresh finds at her Parisian market, Bard contemplates her family and personal history.

As much as it documents her courtship, relationship, and marriage to Gwendal, a digital archivist and entrepreneur, Lunch in Paris is about Bard’s acclimatization to a Parisian pace of life and ultimately, self-acceptance. Bard finds her stride by finally finding a peaceful balance between her Parisian and New York lives and selves. While this revelation is not particularly groundbreaking and her feminist-tinged reflections stay in safe mainstream territory, Lunch in Paris satisfies readers with a good story, intelligent and heartfelt reflections, and mouth-watering recipes. It’s not clear if these recipes have been kitchen tested the way one would for a professional cookbook, but they serve as solid guidelines for readers interested to add a French twist to their cooking.

While it may not become part of the Americans in Paris literary cannon, Lunch in Paris is a satisfying, straightforward read that feels like a good friend telling you a particularly tasty—and truthful—story.

Review by Eleanor Whitney

ENDOGENOUS ART FORMS - Graffiti Art

Some art forms do not require the mechanisms of external guidance. They managed to do well without the curators, critics, collectors and the like. Both these forms require special accommodations. This art of self-involved with life in the energy that comes from an unbridled enthusiasm for the artists themselves. Involvement is the key word. This term refers to the philosophy of authentic existence, which implies the involvement of the existence of the elements in the opposite dichotomy - existence through an institutional placement in accordance with certain conditions.

One can argue that the extent to which external conditions determine what art reaches the level of art in terms of lack of self-determination. Art form in my mind growing up and even though their condition. Moreover, they often are in the same condition was contrary to what they. Consider the situation of art subject to the rules of what is called "image pollution" of public space. From the legal standpoint, there is no art possible in this bureaucratic framework. However, it is. It's everywhere. I spent several days exploring this phenomenon - the art of perpetuating themselves. Found in New York City you do not have to Indiana Jones. If you're lazy, you just walk in 12 streets in the East Village to reach the Open Road Park - a popular site among skateboardists. The Open Road Park fenced on all sides by high walls. The wall is what makes the park so attractive to street artists.

If you are less inert, you take a subway train across the East River to Long Island City, get off at the 45th Rd./Courthouse Square and ask someone for the direction to 5 POINTZ – it is around one of the corners. There with your eyeballs rolling you will witness how wild the endogenous art can grow. On the entire block that contains what once used to be an industrial complex, you will have hard time finding a spot to insert your tag without slashing a piece. Hard time as it was, I found one – a heaven spot. “Tag” is a stylized signature; to “slash” is to tag over another’s graffiti and to go over it is considered a deep insult; “piece” is a large and labor-intensive graffiti painting; “heaven spot” is a hard-to-reach place such as rooftop. I am getting there… And you wait for an update, if I manage to keep my bones together.

source : http://futureblog.designhotels.com/endogenous-art-forms/

Moulin Rouge Painting in Sexy Buttocks

Body Painting is a form of body art. This is a temporary design on the body, usually lasted several hours. In some cases, will last several weeks, is usually referred to as henna tattoos. This semi-permanent form of body paint called Mahndi, who use henna as a dye, so the common name of the henna tattoo. Body paint made with a combination of clay and other paint mixed together. If the painting was limited to the face, it was then known as face painting.

Many cultures and tribes have been used, and is still used, in a ritual body painting and special events. Native of Australia, New Zealand, Pacific Islands and some parts of Africa are still using the painting as their ancestors thousands of years ago. A henna tattoo is still a popular practice in the Middle East and India. Some of the natives of South America still use huito, annatoo, or wet charcoal as a body and face decoration.


In the modern day body art there is some debate as to whether is should be considered art or not. There is the form where the painting covers a nude body. Then the other style is to paint on a part of the body while the rest of the body is clothed. Many use body painting to make a statement, for political or activists’ rights.

There are body painting events that are held worldwide for all artists both amateur and professional. The largest event held for body painting artists is the World Bodypainting Festival held in both Seeboden and Austria. Artists come from world wide to showcase their talent, armatures also come to see what others bring to the table and learn. There is also a lot of visitors who come to see the art and possible get some art done to their bodies. In the United States there are shows held in upstate New York, American Body Arts Festival, and then the US Bodypainting Festival in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Body painting has become more popular since the early 1990’s and is slowly becoming more accepted. There have been layouts and articles in many magazines that feature body painting. Some of these magazines are Playboy and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Addition. Another place that these paints are used in military groups worldwide.

There are many ways that these body paints are used around the world. Some are for art and fashion while others are used for job security purposes. The functions and uses for all these areas vary.

source : http://bodypaintings.com.au/

Body Art - Body Painting Culture

Body art - this art has many supporters and opponents. Tell the truth, can not be called art at all. Opponents say that it is vulgar, ugly and even dangerous. Supporters give their reason, that for centuries people have adorned themselves, either with clothing or jewelry and tattoos, body painting, plastic surgery and piercing is just a way to make people beautiful.

What for? A tricky question, but everybody has his or her own reason, actually, there are a lot of them: now people want to look better, earlier it was a necessity in order to get rid of enemies and frighten them. Actually, everybody has the right onto self-expression and if someone wants his or her body to be painted, it doesn’t matter. The deal is – we should feel the difference and a vague measure between a vulgar and a stylish appearance.


Body art can be divided into the following arts: tattoos making, body piercing and body painting. Very often artists take a nude model and paint her of his body with various types of paints of different colours and nowadays it is extremely popular among celebrities (especially tattoo making).



I like body painting very much, as for me it the only one way, to paint something on your body and to wash it with a help of water and soap in a week or in a day. Very often body painting implies usage of the additional materials, such as clay, flowers etc. Body painting is made not on the entirely nude body, a model can have a bra or pants, because body painting deals with a small part of the body. I adore their technique in creating situation and pictures in the medium- so-called thematic pictures. When a model is only a continuation of the reality.

source : http://chicstories.com/history/body-art-culture/

The Indian Holi Festival (Festival of Colors)