My mind is a ball on a roulette wheel this morning, bouncing across the quadrants, subjects arising, questions… Such as, is it ok to address the circassian beauties (created by PT Barnum) as embodying a commodification of both women and enslavement?

I wonder … is my own critique of this clear enough?  This is on my mind because I am awaiting a profile to be published in Elephant on my work and for my profile picture I am performing a hybrid PT Barnum circassian beauty (commodifying the image of myself more explicitly for the context of a magazine).

In essence my interest is to draw a parallel between the commodification that finds expression in the "freak show" as being  synchronous with the celebrity culture we revel in, we look on with awe and repulsion, we judge and faun and condemn. The freak shows were banned as deeply offensive and exploitative – but we are we really living in better times? There is incidently a park in China ..https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_the_Little_People