America the Beautiful?

America the Beautiful, a film by Darryl Roberts, was clearly not a super high-budget or professionally made movie, but I think it was able to accomplish a lot and cover a lot of important material. One not-so-positive review of this movie was written by Nick Pinkerton in The Village Voice. He opens his critical review with a pretty harsh statement: “The scattershot America the Beautiful recapitulates vintage Beauty Myth trumpery: Beauty standards make us average frumps miserable and are the conspiratorial invention of a cabal of Madison Avenue execs working in concert with Patriarchal Hegemony.” While I agree that the film was slightly scattered and definitely could improve in certain areas, I believe that it provided an insightful view into America’s fashion industry, following the sad story of Gerren Taylor who started as a supermodel at age 12 and after only a few years was forgotten. The film also gave some terrible and surprising footage and information about plastic surgery, the ingredients of cosmetics and their effects, and other aspects of the beauty industry.

This film was very thought-provoking. It definitely made me think more about what life is like as a model and changed my opinion of the fashion industry. While I still am not a fan of the fashion industry, this film made me realize just how much work being a model is and how hard it is, especially on a young girl like Gerren. Though it may not change my physical actions in any way, this film will definitely change the way I think and what I think about America’s beauty/fashion industry and its effects on girls and women. And as cheesy as it may sound, this film reminded me that everyone is beautiful in their own way.