As women, there is this inexplicable desire to be desired and it seems that the easiest way to satisfy this need is to be beautiful. Our parents will tell us that it doesn't matter what we look like on the outside, but what really matters is what's inside. But achieving inner beauty is a time-consuming process whereas outer beauty gives instant results. Photographer Lewis Watts focuses his art on photographing African American cultural landscapes, the places where people live, the ways they occupy and use space, and the traces they leave behind. Throughout his works, photos from across the country capture these spaces and the traces people left behind. Her work entitled Beauty on West 142nd Street, Harlem, 2007 shows a young girl alone on the street, dressed in a ball gown, while the world around her carries on, almost oblivious to her presence. This girl, the beauty the title speaks of, is essentially an artificial sense of beauty. Lewis Watts' idea of ​​beauty was shaped and reconstructed according to society's idea of ​​what beauty should be, and while he was able to capture an African American landscape, he neglected to take into account the European traces around which all his work is centered. By accepting the worldview of beauty, we accept its narrow conception of beauty and limit ourselves to beauty that falls outside the boundaries that society has drawn for us. When European explorers of the new world “discovered” people who seemed different to them, it raised questions. as to whether all could be considered in the same “family of men”. In order to better accept this new discovery, they had to distinguish those who looked like them from new peoples, not quite human. Racial categories and m...... middle of paper ... it doesn't matter how you perceive yourself when the rest of the world is there to tell you that you are something else. More than half a century has passed since the days of modern colonialism when Europeans first enslaved Africans and yet in today's civilization they seem to be finding new ways to enslave African descendants. Photographer Lewis Watts' narrow, socially constructed view of beauty, depicted in Beauty on West 142nd Street, Harlem, 2007, illustrates the European traces embedded in society from which it is almost impossible to escape. Works Cited Omi, Micheal and Howard Winamt. “Racial formation”. The African Diaspora and the World (2013): 83-96.Beauty. Dictionary.com. The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Houghton Mifflin Company. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/beauty (accessed: October 9, 2013).