Junior Project: Finished Product, Updates, and Reflections
You can check out the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/BJCLh9KhkyY
"I just feel like a monster sometimes". This is just one of the voice memos I received via email, and it broke my heart. I used my documentary to tap into the complications that construct the teenage female psyche.
To have your inner thoughts voiced out loud is oddly comforting. I questioned a timid high schooler, “What are you most insecure about?” “Everything.” Me too. It’s everything in so many ways. It’s everything because beauty means everything. What is most heartbreaking to me is how our culture stresses beauty so intensely it becomes our identity. But this doesn’t just plague us two, it's that girl next door, the girl in your social studies class, and the girl working at the mall. It’s every girl in America. We are all insecure, but pretend not to be, and thus live our lives with a deceptive smile, contoured nose, and hurting heart. The chasm between American culture’s beauty Ideals and contentment grows ever wider With the rise of social media, plastic surgery, photoshop, and more. But despite this ominous ever-growing issue, there is hope. There is instant friendship when people discover they are experiencing a shared suffering. Think of the implications of a friendship that spans not just two people, but an entire nation of teenage girls: There is potential for great power and great healing.
What astonished me was that beyond exteriors, cultures, and even religion, there was a unified voice emerging, albeit worded differently. I know we all like to think of ourselves as unique, diverse individuals, but I also found we are eerily more similar than we'd even like to admit. The blonde Victoria's Secret woman is still perceived as the ideal. We parrot what we heard from our parents or what we read on Instagram, and believe we are holding our own original opinion, but when one breaks this façade of free thought they find the same indoctrinistic thinking. There is also a disconnect between what we say we believe, and what we actually believe. Maybe this is a result of our subjective culture, or maybe this is just us denying truth that is too painful or jarring to accept. We cling on to the shred of comfort that self-care promises, and desperately stare in the mirror and attempt to combat our insecurities with affirmations. We refuse to subject other girls to a certain beauty ideal, yet viciously try to force ourselves to fit into this box. We hate the pressure to wear makeup, but religiously wear it anyway.
Sadly, because I was so involved in the details of my project, I became unattached from the emotional appeal of my documentary until I screened it to my school and posted it on youtube. When it Quickly garnered hundreds of YouTube views, I was shocked. There were a lot of tears: from teachers, mothers, and peers alike. There was also a lot of gratitude for airing a conversation topic that had been so ominously silent. I had assumed that guys would be completely uninterested, but my brother's burly tennis coach's indignant remark that “this is messed up, I had no idea”, told me otherwise.
So how do we fight the influx of messages that scream we are not enough? For me, I found solace in having a heart-to-heart with other high schoolers. We can encourage, affirm, challenge, and support one another through this battleground of adolescence. That is part of the reason why I was so surprised by the large positive reaction from my audiences, because it felt so normal, and familiar, but that’s exactly what made it so invaluable. I created a platform that would give these girls, as spokespeople for all of us, an unfiltered voice, a new perspective, and a much needed conversation.
UPDATE: Beauty conversations was nominated for AAHSFF! (Will be streamed in NYC)
