Movies and the Beauty Myth

I was just thinking about how not all media perpetuates things like the beauty myth, like sooo many people in this class feel. In Little Miss Sunshine, olive is a not so pretty stout litttle girl with huge glasses who wants to enter the Little Miss Sunshine pagent. Throughout the movie Olive's father promotes the idea of perfection into olive's head. There is a scene in which olive orders ice cream, and her dad says that beauty queens dont eat ice cream because it makes them fat. So, olive doesnt want any of it.

Movies like Little Miss Sunshine show how culture defining beauty is wrong, and that even little girls, like olive, are putting themselves on diets and restricting themselves from harmless things like ice cream. The point of having this in a film is to show the morbidness of it all. The outcome in the end is that olive is finally accepted as being the beautiful little girl that she is.

Another film that shows someone who is beautiful, but not the typical beauty isThora Birch in American Beauty. Thora plays an offbeat somewhat gothic depressed teenager who finds love in her equally odd new neighbor. She has a best friend who is a blonde beauty, and whos worst fear is to be seen as ordinary. The friend is shown in an extrememly negative light, and even though she is beautiful, she has extremely low self esteem.

These films are made to not perpetuate the beauty myth. They are done in order to show that other things can be beautiful, and even more so than the "typical ideal barbie." Because films like these are made, and winning tons of awards, its wrong to say that all media and media alone creates unreachable perfection. A person can choose and pick what films, television shows, or magazines to read and endorse. It is our fault because it is our choice.