America the Beautiful

By Jenny Siddle
Sept 16, 2008

They say a picture speaks a thousand words, and never could that statement be truer than flipping through the pages of any Cosmo-esque magazine. No matter how many articles they print promoting individuality and body diversification, the overwhelming number of analogous photos of tall, thin, high cheek-boned young women flashing perfectly white teeth define our culture’s sexual desires and physical expectations. Whether they admit it or not, girls want to be these images and guys want to be with them.

Is America beauty obsessed? One would be naïve not to think so, which made me wonder – what am I really going to learn by watching Darryl Roberts’ recent documentary that begs that very question. That 99.99% of pictures you see in magazines are air brushed to unnatural perfection? That models are asked lose an unhealthy amount of weight until they are walking skeletons? This I already know.

America The Beautiful centres on one specific runway model named Gerren Taylor. A 5’11 slender beauty, Gerren has hit the big time, landing numerous magazine covers and strutting down the catwalk at New York’s prestigious Fashion Week. Sounds like your typical tale of a fashionista’s rapid rise to stardom, right? Until we learn that Gerren is 12 years old. As if modeling standards are not unattainable enough already, now the ideal body for a woman is that of a thin, undeveloped twelve year old. Despite all that she represents, you cannot help but fall in love with the bubbly junior high school student – possibly because we are more aware than she is that she is just a kid prancing around in a very cruel, unrelenting adult profession. We want to protect this girl every time that her mother, Michele, a former model herself, pushes her up the next rung of the runway ladder. We worry that the higher she climbs, the harder she, one day, may fall…

Throughout the documentary we literally watch Gerren grow up in front of our eyes, from a wide-eyed twelve year old to a confident young woman at 15. Gerren’s story is definitely the strongest part of the documentary and it is really quite amazing that Roberts was able to film Gerren and Michelle for over three years. Interwoven with Gerren’s footage are numerous interviews with celebrities, fashion magazine editors, photographers, and even some of Gerren’s classmates and teachers giving their interpretation of beauty. Roberts, who is both the film’s director and narrator, openly questions the social responsibility of the major teenage/fashion magazines that sell airbrushed images as the ideal physical state. “We are selling a dream,” admits one magazine photographer. “An unattainable dream.”

There is a bit of a Michael Moorish feel to this documentary in the sense that Roberts is very visible as the film’s director, both on screen and as the voice over narrator. In the same way that Moore often asks seemingly obvious, almost patronizing, questions in his documentaries, Roberts narrates as though he had never really considered that the vast majority of female teenagers might have body image issues. However, in a post film interview, Roberts admitted that he really was completely ignorant to America’s beauty obsession and, until he worked on this film, nor had he ever met anyone with an eating disorder. In a strange way, this made him the perfect narrator.

At times we are bombarded with too many story angles. Instead of focusing on the aesthetic procedures we frequently see discussed on television anyway (i.e. botched cosmetic surgeries, skin lightening, and air brushing), Roberts may have been wiser to focus on the societal effects of beauty obsession. Although no topic in the film was insignificant, some aspects (i.e. the definition of beauty in closed cultures, failed insurance pleas for bulimic patients and, of course, the male perspective) were definitely the most enlightening themes and could have been explored more.

Having said all this, I completely agree with Roger Ebert when he described this movie as “the film that might rescue the lives of girls age 12 and up.” With the outrageous amount of beauty propaganda thrown in our faces every day, this was a refreshing reminder that the “ideal image” is indeed a human construction. What we build we have the power to destroy. As we learn from Roberts’ interview, magazine editors admit there is too much money in their industry not to continue publishing the unattainable dream. As a result, Roberts preaches to the audience that we as people have to take responsibility for our own perceptions, our own ideals. He couldn’t be further from the truth.

As of the time this article was written, America The Beautiful was still searching for distribution in Canada. A number of advocates nationwide, such as the Beau Cote Centre for Eating Disorders in Vancouver, are trying to help Daryl Roberts find distribution in order to let this film be seen by a larger audience across the country. I wish Daryl Roberts the best in his journey, as this documentary truly is one all people should see.

Limited Release Date: August 1 2008
Running Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Director: Darryl Roberts
Producers: Michele G. Bluthenthal, Roderick Gatlin, and Stela Georgieva
Executive Producers: Dr. Henry Anderson, Michael Beach, Dennis Damore, Terence Wright
Music: Michael Bearden
Director of Photography: Gavin Wynn
Editor: Charles Miller