Miss United States of America

This is my first attempt the new art theme I came up with. I call it "Saris of the World," where I'll show various ladies from around the world dressed in Saris (the national costume of India) whose coloring is based on their nation's flag.  You can find more of them here: ladyaquanine73551.deviantart.c…

In fact, this picture was what inspired me to get started . It was another way to have fun with Doll-Divine's Sari-Maker game www.dolldivine.com/sari-maker.… I also wanted to do the US first anyway, since I'm from there

The costume turned out really well. The border on the sari was an especially nice touch b/c the white flowers look like the stars on our flag. I tried gold jewelry on the outfit, but it looked too flashy, and the silver compliments the white more w/out taking away from the image. The white dress under the sari was inspired by Lady Liberty, a mythological figure few modern Americans know about (unless, of course, she's green, holds a torch, & stands 305 ft. (92.962 m.) over the New York Harbor, lol).

I only know about Lady Liberty because I got bored in a number of my history classes and was flipping through my textbooks. She was a romantic figure featured in Victorian political artwork.  Usually she was shown wearing a white ancient Greek chiton and either holding the flag, or wearing it. I've only ever seen her as a blond or a brunette.

The background made me think of the Rocky Mountains. The US has many, many different landscapes, with beaches, mountains, farmland, river valleys, forests, lakes, etc. But the Rockies are featured in a great deal of our art, so I went with it. (Hehehe, maybe I should have photo-shopped a bald eagle on her shoulder while I was at it).

My only real conundrum involved the ethnicity of the model. As everyone knows, the US is a melting pot of different peoples. White, African American, Hispanic, Asian, Indian, European, African, Central Asian, Middle-Eastern; you name it, we have it. (The first 3 mentioned are our largest groups). The model could have looked like any of those, but I could only choose one.

There's also a common stereotype that all white Americans are blond and blue-eyed, which is TOTALLY not true. We have brunettes and redheads too. Blond is only 1 of the hair colors we have, & quite a number of them started out as brunettes and dyed/bleached their hair. (Same goes for redheads as well, how most started out with brown/black/blond hair & dyed it).

In my living memory, most Caucasian Americans I've seen naturally have light brown hair with blue or brown eyes. Green, gray, & lavender eyes do occur, but are rarer.  We usually like to change that with hair dyes, contact lenses, and tanning.

In the end, I just picked a girl that most people could identify as American and left it at that.