La dicotomía de la belleza: discursos de poder y regímenes de representación en la configuración de la identidad y la percepción corporal en la juventud contemporánea (12-25 años).

Abstract

In today’s hyper-connected landscape, the shaping of visual identity and body perception among young people—particularly those aged 12 to 25—is profoundly mediated by technological devices, consumer logics, and institutional aesthetic discourses. This undergraduate research project, titled *The Dichotomy of Beauty: Discourses of Power and Regimes of Representation in the Shaping of Identity and Body Perception among Contemporary Youth*, critically examines the unresolved tensions between the biological materiality experienced by young people and the idealized or virtual representations of them demanded on digital platforms. Employing a methodology rooted in the research-creation paradigm, this study problematizes how normative beauty standards operate as mechanisms of symbolic control and bodily discipline.The conceptual foundation of this research is built upon a multidisciplinary framework that engages with key theorists of embodiment, biopower, and contemporary aesthetics. On one hand, it draws on Michel Foucault’s postulates regarding biopower and anatomo-politics to unravel the mechanisms of microscopic body regulation. However, this analysis is updated for the digital environment through the work of Byung-Chul Han (2015), who defines the "aesthetics of the smooth" as an aseptic digital flatness that eliminates imperfections and physical otherness in favor of fluid visual consumption. Complementing this, Gilles Lipovetsky’s (2013) work on "artistic capitalism" allows for an analysis of how beauty has become massified as a market imperative, drawing subjects—with a particular focus on young women—into a new form of voluntary servitude dominated by self-surveillance and somatic optimization. Finally, Paula Sibilia’s (2005) theses regarding the "post-organic body" and "intimacy as spectacle," together with Susan Bordo’s (1993) historical analysis of bodily control, consolidate the critical framework necessary to interpret contemporary phenomena such as digital dysmorphia.This crisis of body dissatisfaction is not addressed solely through theoretical abstraction;the project is firmly rooted in the social context of Colombia and the city of Bogotá.Local statistics gathered during the research demonstrate the urgent need for a criticalintervention: daily exposure to algorithmic feeds leads 17% of young Colombians to sufferfrom body dysmorphic disorder, within an environment where surgical and cosmeticprocedures are increasing by 10% to 15% annually (ISAPS, 2025; Universidad de La Sabana, 2026).In the face of prevailing visual dematerialization and homogenization, this Fine Arts thesis establishes studio practice as a material epistemology and a space for political resistance. The resulting artistic proposal—comprising textured acrylic paintings, monumental ceramic sculptures, and altered face masks—intentionally draws upon transgressive aesthetic references such as Orlan, Amalia Ulman, Arvida Byström, and Cindy Sherman. Through the use of clay, rough textures, cracks, asymmetries, and exposed skeletal structures, the work deconstructs virtual smoothness and restores the constitutive wound of the real body. Ultimately, this introduction paves the way for a document that seeks not merely to passively record the somatic malaise of youth, but to generate embodied knowledge and counter-images capable of subverting the aesthetic panopticons of contemporary screens.