A blonde, blue-eyed woman adjusts her makeup. She then wraps her face in saran wrap in an apparant attempt to preserve its “beauty." She stops only when she can no longer breathe. Removing the resulting cocoon, she ritualistically repeats this wrapping process until she has reached physical exhaustion.

The ideal woman is not only supposed to maintain an immaculate home, but a sanitized body as well. Her beauty has been removed from her control and sold back to her at a marked-up price. Packaged Goods explores this process of commodification and questions our desire for packaged beauty. The female body is quarantined to the point of repulsion and beauty rituals are pushed to the extreme.

Packaged Goods has been exhibited in several different contexts. Originally conceived of as a document of a durational performance, shorter versions of the video have screened at film festivals around the country. A looped version has been displayed on an LCD screen installed in the makeup section of Walgreens. It has also been projected as part of an ongoing performance and video installation series. The full 30 minute version has aired on cable access television and at several galleries in New York.