My group and I watched the Beauty Culture Documentary. Beauty Culture investigates our obsession with beauty in the society and the influence of photoshop on a women’s body. In the documentary there are interviews from many points of view. There are teenagers, fashion photographers, child pageant starts, body builders who talk about beauty from their point of view. One thing that surprised me was how much a women’s body image is changed in photoshop to be “perfect”. Some girls are pushed to be in the beauty industry ever since they could walk. This means that ever since they could walk they were surrounded by stereotypes about women. Maybe later in life they are going to take more extreme measures to be what the society wants them to be and not what they truly are. At one point in the movie the people talk about girls’ self-esteem. When the girls are younger they are very confident about themselves. Once they reach their teen years they become more surrounded by the media. They become more exposed to the stereotypes. The reality is that only 2% of the world population is what the media shows. This struck me because I realized how much the media actually impacts women. In their teen years girls start to feel more insecure. One thing that my group was very struck by is the extreme things the girls do in order to fit what the media portrays as perfect. They endanger their health and their lives sometimes. My group was very struck by this movie and we got a chance to take a deeper look at the beauty culture.
