Junior Year Project: The Beauty Conversation
I dedicated a significant amount of time out of my junior year doing an independent study on the effect of the American beauty standard on teenage girls. I explored how girls think about beauty based society issues and how it shapes their worldview.
From a young age, I have felt the effects of America’s obsession with beauty. Instead of role-playing with my dolls, I would devote hours to making their hair look absolutely perfect. I would coordinate the shoes and the outfit to match, and save up my money to keep them “on trend”. I would pretend to be famous TV stars with my friends, and pose for the crowds of “paparazzi”. I enjoyed feeling beautiful, and I did, except there was something wrong. Growing up the only asian in a sea of white faces, I quickly learned that there was something different about me, and associated that difference with disgust. I hated my stick straight black hair, and enviously gazed at the bouncy blond and brunette hair surrounding me. I viewed my yellow tinged skin as a curse and looked on my thin frame with disdain. Did anyone ever tell me how I looked was wrong? No. So how did I get to this place in which I felt God had made a big mistake?
As I journeyed through middle school, it seemed everyone cared a lot more about how they looked. Suddenly, shopping became a regular activity for me, tops were chopped, and pants shrunk. Amidst the blur of pubescent insecurity and competition, I realized something. The very girls I wanted to be were not happy with how they looked either. In fact, the ones who looked the best seemed to be the most unhappy. It seemed their physical beauty did not lead to satisfaction or happiness.
Come high school, the appearance experimentation continued. I tried on makeup looks as frequently as I changed clothes. Yet, it was here that I learned there is more to beauty than what is outside. I had been told inner beauty was important my whole life, but I never believed it. But with deeper friendships came a deeper understanding of the soul, the beauty of complexity and the beauty of growth. With the study of literature and the Bible came the affirmation of inner beauty and the beauty of self sacrifice, purity, and love. Thus it seems I had two competing definitions of beauty. There was the purely instinctual physical attraction, and the deeper, subtler virtues. I wondered how two such different definitions could coexist, and how the seemingly shallower one prevailed.
So I took my questions about beauty and how it relates to one’s personal life and the world, and began my search for stories.
What I found was very intriguing.
It seems that theoretically, beauty has been reduced to a feeling. Yet practically, the pressure on teenage girls to conform to a certain standard is higher than ever. There was a new religion of self affirmation and “positive self talk”, yet the uniformity of teenage beauty trends increases. Girls hovered precariously above the precipice of the dark chasm that holds the roots of the problem. When asked who was responsible for creating the standard of beauty, girls pointed to a specific group, yet with so many different groups being pointed out, it made me think the problem was bigger and more complicated than what first meets the eye. Peer pressure and social media only further exacerbate this problem. This is an issue I believe should be brought to the light and talked about openly. I have observed that sometimes in the Christian community, physical appearance is so underplayed and “inner beauty” so emphasized that insecurities are often ignored. I hope “Beauty Conversations” is challenging, enlightening, and enjoyable and that this conversation can lead to many more.
You can check out the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/BJCLh9KhkyY
You can learn more about my project by reading about it in my blog! (click the link at the bottom of this page)
