America the Beautiful...

Okay, so I've seriously got four other blog post ideas on stickies on my compy right now, just waiting to be written about, but I'm gonna delay them to write about this documentary I just watched called "America the Beautiful." It's on Netflix instant if you wanna check it out. I think every parent and everyone (both men and women) of a suitable age (it's rated R, and there is some mature-ish content in there, plus if you're particularly squeamish it might not be a good idea since you see some plastic surgeries being done) should watch it.

The documentary is about self-image in the United States (focusing primarily on women and girls). Naturally, the media gets quite a lot of attention as well. The documentary covers a lot of ground in its hour and forty-five or so minutes, looking at everything from the rise and fall of a 12-year-old model named Gerren to toxic materials in cosmetics to eating disorders to advertising execs at big companies to airbrushing to plastic surgery and more. In some ways, it seemed like it was covering TOO broad a scope, but all in all, I think it did a fantastic job of giving an *introduction* to all of these different issues that factor into the broader topic of female self-image in America. Because this IS a complex issue. I don't think there's an easy way to solve this problem, and the film doesn't really try to offer one. And it's not really possible to assign blame to one particular party, either. Certainly the media inundates women with very specific standards of what is beautiful and what is not. But so do men. So do parents and other family members. So do friends and peers. And so also women often impose these impossible standards on themselves.

There's a lot I could write about this issue, but I honestly just think everyone reading this should go watch the documentary themselves. I'll highlight one or two interesting pieces before I close, though. First of all, the documentarian interviewed a (Harvard?) sociologist who studied the people of Fiji. When she began studying them, they had their own wonderful culture and their own ideas about what beauty was (for example, larger bodies were appreciated since they were signs of more affluence). In 1995, television came to Fiji. At this point, none of the girls the sociologist studied had ever purged as a form of weight control, but just three years later - three *television-filled* years later - 11% of the girls interviewed had. The United States has had television for about 60 years now.

And now some stats:
-50% of girls between the ages of 11 and 13 see themselves as overweight
-80% of *13-year-olds* have attempted to lose weight
-Approximately 7 million girls and women struggle with eating disorders
-Approximately 1 million boys and men struggle with eating disorders
-As many as 10% of college women suffer from a clinical or nearly clinical eating disorder, including 5.1% who suffer from bulimia nervosa

Anyway, to close, as I already have by facebook, text, chat, phone, etc., let me just say once more: women, you are beautiful, inside and out; and men, you need to take responsibility to tell the women in your life (moms, sisters, friends, significant others, etc.) both NOW and OFTEN that they are beautiful. And they might not believe it at first, because everything a woman faces in this culture tells her that she's not thin enough, not tall enough, not beautiful enough, not curvy enough, not in-shape enough, not tan enough, and just plain not enough, so just keep on telling them.