America The Beautiful
You are fat. You are ugly. You are fat. You are ugly. This is the message that is ingrained by the media blitz preached by conglomerates and all things that make YOU look MORE BEAUTIFUL in their print and various media sermons.
The film is a series of interviews with vanity itself. Its peddlers at fashion magazines and agencies, the minions at Fashion Week, the beautiful people of celebrity status, and the few that look into a mirror stared back by the ugly truth brought on by figments of an imagination of souls spurned by a media hypnosis. Darryl Roberts searches the opinions on both sides of the issue and finds an interesting cast of varied individuals.
The audience is treated to an interesting take on the world of fashion and beauty. One of the subjects in the film is a 12 year old girl who became something of an overnight success whose success was limited to overnight by a mother who lived vicariously through her daughter and appointed her as a monster in which a school principal and the good people in the fashion world sooner would cut relations than carry on any form of communication.
By watching this we learn of a serious problem that we as a nation suffer. Numerous girls that adhere to the commercial messages that thin is best are bags of bones by the time the coroner gets them. Girls as young as five begin to diet as older women in their quest for beauty ponder plastic surgery. Older women in this case are actually teenaged females assisted by their reprehensible parents that allow for doctors with little or no experience place their non-board certified plastic surgeon hands on them to insert breast implants and remove whatever for reasons that do not warrant any sensibility or medical need.
Beauty is not only suggested it is mandatory. Daryl interviews a group of vain creatures that are part of a website in which the public rates submitted picture of individuals as to their level of attractiveness that determines their acceptance or rejection to be part of their beautiful cyber community. Daryl is a nice looking man, obviously intelligent and determined, seems personable, with, as Anthony Kiedis told him, has a beautiful handshake. So, the director that will not be mistaken for an Armani model puts up a profile and is rejected to hobnob among this group of beautiful people.
Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson give concocted answer to the question, “What is Beauty?” The slut and the one with the huge breasts both endorse products and sell themselves to the public by dolling themselves up and become part of the machine that is in question here. Neither of the two could find it in themselves to reveal their truthful answers. One mumbled something about confidence, I think, and the other…what does it matter what they claim to think.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Societies eyes see differently from vantage points across the globe. Eve Ensler, author of “The Vagina Monologues”, retells an animated tale of a dialogue she had with a woman in Africa. The lady was taken aback by the questioning if she liked her body. The woman praised her limbs and gave an interesting anecdote about human bodies analogous to trees. Are far off places immune to the beauty epidemic? An interviewee stated that in Fiji the introduction of television had begun to make drastic changes to their sociological views in only three short years.
Revelations are made that the FDA ignores chemicals within cosmetics that are quite dangerous that have adverse health effects on mothers and their offspring. The film cites the European Union as safeguarding their citizens from such containments to the point where a figure of about 400 ingredients are prohibited as opposed to six or so banned by the FDA. As suspected, the money hawkers from the cosmetic industry defend their position and a list of companies that banded together to stop a government investigation into banning such ingredients is exposed.
With stories of death, graphic clips of surgery, facts and tidbits, and the saga of a 12 year old girl with a 6 foot frame and 96 cm hips that are considered too big by French fashion standards for the sake of saving money on fabric, America the Beautiful shows the ugly side of greed and distorted views from a mirror.
