Documentary: America the Beautiful
February 3, 2010 | Jonathan Wu
Film maker, Darryl Roberts, spent the past five years gathering interviews and stories to create his potent documentary, America the Beautiful. This film captures the excessive emphasis on “perfect” beauty in American culture and the consequences of this mentality.
The documentary chronicles the rise and fall of Gerren Taylor, a runway model who began her career at the age of 12. Starting iwth good intentions, Gerren and her mother found great success as Gerren was hired to catwalk for Marc Jacobs, DKNY, Tommy Hilfiger and the like. But eventually, Taylor and her mother got too caught up in the unrealistic demands of the industry and took it hard when the industry chewed them up and spat them out.
From telling this story, Roberts also digs into the topics of plastic surgery, the cosmetic culture, the media standard for “beauty,” and bulimia. And in digging through these prevalent aspects of the American culture, Roberts shows some of the consequences among girls and women ranging from elementary school to college to those in their middle age.
Roberts’ journey in unveiling this aspect of America leads him to interviewing Ted Casablanca from the E! Channel, Susan Schulz, the Editor-in-Chief of CosmoGirl, Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, Martin Short, and many more.
This documentary is extremely powerful and does a exemplary job at capturing the horrid beauty culture in America right now. I highly recommend this to everyone no matter what your opinion is on what “beauty” is. Ultimately, like it or not, everyone of us living in this day and age in America is constantly saturated with the idea of the “ideal” a.k.a. unrealistic beauty and through this documentary, Roberts challenges its audience to reclaim beauty for what is truly is in our language, perspective, and expectations.
Check out the trailer and more information about this documentary here.
