Miss Representation Page #2

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Me being a small person,

like, at my old school,

I was told to, like, go throw up

[voice breaking]

or, like, go eat a hamburger

because people thought I was

like, anorexic or something.

So I would, like, eat a lot

so that people would think

that I didn't have

an eating disorder.

I straighten my hair

just so I can fit in

when I have naturally curly hair.

I have close friends that,

like, in between break periods,

they will go to the bathroom

and put on like 10 pounds

of make-up

and, you know, comb their hair

and do all this pampering you know,

and you're at school to learn.

When is it gonna be enough'?

'Cause, you know, I have

a younger sister, and, like.

[voice breaking] She's like...

[sighs]

Kilbourne:

The ideal image of beauty

is more extreme and impossible

than ever before.

In the old days,

the perfection was achieved

through cosmetics and airbrushing,

but now it's possible

for that image to be

absolutely perfect

because of computers.

[camera shutter clicking]

You never see the photograph

of a woman considered beautiful

that hasn't been digitally altered

to make her absolutely,

inhumanly perfect.

Girls are being encouraged

to achieve that ideal

at younger and younger ages

all the time.

They end up measuring themselves

against an impossible standard

and feeling themselves wanting

as a result of it.

Also, not surprisingly,

young men who are shown lots

of photographs of supermodels

then judge real women

much more harshly.

The most important thing

to understand

about all of these images

and how they affect us

is that the effect

is primarily subconscious

and that it is very harmful

but that for the most part,

we're not really aware of that,

which is why we need to

pay conscious attention

to these images.

The average child develops

over 18 to 24 years,

and full brain development

doesn't really occur

until you're into your early 20s.

So the idea that kids

at 8 or 10 or 15

have the same level

of intellectual and emotional

maturity as an adult is nuts.

They have different

interpretive abilities,

they have different

emotional abilities,

and they're a much more

vulnerable class in society.

I worry about, you know, how

much pressure my daughters feel

in a society that features

anorexic actresses and models

and television stars.

We get conditioned to think

this is what women should look like,

so even people

of average weight and size

have body dysmorphic disorder.

When I did my first television

show, "All-American Girl,"

which was the first

Asian-American family show

on television,

I had a lot of problems

with the network

because they were constantly

telling me that I was too fat.

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