I Promise, You’re Prettier Than You Think

Who’s seen Little Miss Sunshine? If you haven’t, just picture a little girl sitting in front of the TV watching a video of the Ms. America, learning how to be beautiful. That’s the first scene of the movie, and you have to feel sorry for Olive, the plain little girl who should be with her friends having a tea party, not sitting at home thinking that she should look like the most extreme version of beauty that is almost impossible to naturally attain.

Olive isn’t the only girl/young woman who has dealt with body image issues. The conflict is created when a girl is faced with the way she thinks she should look- 5’6 or taller, 110 pounds or less, face straight out of a brochure from the plastic surgeon-and what she sees in the mirror. More and more girls are turning to eating disorders like bulimia and anorexia to compensate for their ‘flaws.’ The horrible thing is, eating disorders don’t change anything. Throwing up your food or simply just not eating won’t help you love yourself, won’t help you realize that people love you. Even in cases that don’t develop into eating disorders, thinking that you’re fat, ugly or not good enough isn’t healthy, and isn’t true. Everyone knows ‘that girl,’ who, because she doesn’t look like the women our society deems ‘perfect’, will say to anyone that will listen, “I’m fat,” even though she’s skinny, and, “I’m ugly,” even though she’s not.

And now for all those Olives, ‘that girls,’ out there, and for anyone who has ever wished that they look more like a celebrity: according to the people who run the Miss Universe pageant you are correct in thinking that you don’t look good enough.  Because if average little ‘you’ were pretty enough, then they wouldn’t have asked one of the final five Miss Universe contestants, “What would you change about your physical appearance.”

That’s right folks, at the pageant for the most beautiful women the world has to offer, the event organizers of Miss Universe thought that an acceptable question to ask would be what do you think is not good enough about the way you look. There were tons of questions that they could have ask that could have had CONSTRUCTIVE answers: how would you help with the epidemic of negative body image in preteens and young women? What are your thoughts on eating disorders? What makes a person beautiful?

The question was asked to Lelia Lopes, Miss Angola, and now Miss Universe, who had the grace and sense to say that she was happy with the way she looked and that she wouldn’t change anything. Let’s face it: if Ms. Universe contestants- the women who uphold the highest standard of beauty- can’t be happy with their bodies, how could Average Janes ever be ok themselves?