On December 18th, my Social Justice group met with Esmé Edwards, a senior at our High School, Elisabeth Irwin. The reason we met with Esmé is because we knew that she had been very involved with our topic, and she had a lot of knowledge on it. We sat down with her in our classroom and asked her about the previous work she had done with our topic, “Well, to start, in 10th grade I made a video..” She laughed and trained off. Esmé made an awesome video called America the Sexy. It was of herself in fast motion, of her doing her makeup, and contouring her face, and even stuffing her bra. With clips of magazine spreads and covers, her video shines a new light on women in the media. The purpose of this video was to show how some girls feel like they have to do that to themselves to be “pretty”.
On asking Esmé what inspired her to start this kind of work, she said, “For me, I think it was an issue that I could totally get behind because it was something that was really in my face all the time with magazines and movies and all that. Media is becoming increasingly important in our lives, with Instagram and Facebook and everything and it’s really all about beauty and trying to show your best self.” Later when we asked what she planned to do about this in the future she talked about how important it is to educate girls and how it is important to introduce more female romodels than “Kim Kardashian and Kate Upton” which is so refreshing to hear, because that is what we are trying to do. It is so important to show young girls that there is more than just one definition of beautiful and just because you don’t see a girl that looks like you in the magazines, doesn’t mean you are beautiful. It is exceedingly important to understand that it isn’t your fault if you don’t see girls like you in the magazines and on tv; it’s the fault of how the media chooses to portray woman, by only showing the stick thin, blonde, blue eyed, 5’9 girl. Only 5% of the world has the body that is portrayed in the media 100% of the time. That it absolutely insane. The sooner girls learn to love themselves for themselves and not for anyone else, I believe the world will be a much happier and healthier place.
(https://fromesmewithloveandsqualor.wordpress.com/2013/07/27/america-the-sexy-a-look-at-beauty-standards-today/ : link to Esmé’s video) I highly recommend giving it a watch.
