Journal Entry: America The Beautiful By Darryl Roberts

Journal Entry: America The Beautiful
In the documentary, America The Beautiful by Darryl Roberts, he is trying to understand what causes us obsess with physical beautify and not appreciate what truly makes women gorgeous. Throughout the documentary, Roberts follows twelve-year-old Gerren's modeling career and makes inferences about how a child is a new and impossible standard for older women to live up to. During the duration of the film; impossibly skinny and unhealthy models, beauty cosmetics, and marketing advertisements are analyzed to try to decipher what society makes women conform. Roberts states that we have become a society that measures beauty, and those who cannot measure up, do not have a purpose. The film shows how women are all victims of industries that promote their products and an impossible standard

Essentially, industries decrease people self-esteem in order to make money and sell their advertised products. Companies advertise the “perfect” body that even the models do not have because of edited images, all the while contradicting themselves saying “be yourself”, then promoting unrealistic standards. Roberts inductive thesis fell at the end of the film, stating that the promise of being beautiful leading to a better life, is propaganda and that women’s health is not as important as corporate profit.
The primary appeal in this documentary is the appeal to authority. For example, Mark Baptiste, a leading fashion photographer in the United States, explained that you cannot promote the average body because they will not make money, every photo is touched and edited since the goal is to make the image look perfect. Baptiste goes on to explain that the marketing industry is selling dreams, they need to make money and target people insecurities. Here you have a famous photographer whose has photographed many celebrities, like Paris Hilton, admitting