Ugly

Last night, I went to the Canadian premiere and panel discussion of America the Beautiful.

America the Beautiful Trailer from J B on Vimeo.

In some ways, it was a story we’ve all heard many times before: plastic surgery is on the rise, girl’s self-esteems are down, models depict an unrealistic ideal of beauty that most women can’t achieve, etc, etc. However, the fact that this tale has been on repeat, or that it isn't always perfect in its execution, doesn’t mean that it is without value.

It is just too much of a damn shame to see beautiful girls of 12, 13 years old, staring into the camera with wide, earnest eyes, and asserting with every iota of their being that they are ugly. This is not spoken with the flutter of eyelashes and the search for praise. It is stated with utter conviction, as though nothing could shake their fundamental faith in their unattractiveness and their subsequently diminished worth as a result.

Yes, it is simplistic to blame it all on the media. We are not merely vessels that absorb and regurgitate what we see on television. But it is also blind and shortsighted to pretend as though the barrage of images merely ricochets without even grazing the surface.

A sociologist reported on how she saw the rate of bulimic behaviour in Fijian adolescent girls increase from 0% to 11% in three years—coincidentally timed with the introduction of television to the island.
A 6 foot model who weighs 130 pounds is told she needs to lose 15 pounds, despite the fact that this weight loss will put her at a BMI in the severely underweight category. When asked about health concerns, she sneers and laughs. “If you want to worry about your health, you go to college.”
Fashion designers justify these requests by stating that fabric is expensive, so it is much more affordable for them to make runway outfits in a Size 0.
Research shows that minutes looking at a fashion magazine results in substantial drops in 70% of women’s self-esteem, and that watching pornography or films with hyper-attractive women make men rate their own partner’s attractiveness as significantly lower.

The filmmaker doesn’t posit a solution, outside of seeing the beauty in everyone, and learning to love oneself—the same messages that have been thrown into Seventeen magazine for years alongside swimsuit spreads and treatises on how to get boys to like you.

I don’t have one either. Awareness is a start, but can be dangerous, too, because images and stories intended for shock value often instead inspire teenage girls. I know that when I watched clips of modeling agencies tearing apart a tiny teenage girl for gaining a pound, I should have been focused on the absurdity of the situation, rather than pondering how appalled they would be at my body.

Perhaps I am a hypocrite, for harping on about the cruelty of beauty ideals while embarking on my own intense diet and exercise routine for the primary purpose of losing weight.

Perhaps media literacy is the key, and if we even spent a proportion of the time that we do harping on kids to say no to drugs instead informing them about the gap between media depictions and realities, they would be substantially better off.

Or perhaps low self-esteem is merely the cross we all have to bear as a part of growing up.
I certainly hope not.