SEPTEMBER 17, 2009 ISSUE
Hung Up On Hype
Beautymark Explores Devastation From Unreal Standards of Beauty and Other Things
Diane Israel is executive producer, co-producer and co-writer of Beautymark, and will attend the screening at Farthing Auditorium on September 24 and answer questions afterwards.
In the 2001 groundbreaking animated feature Shrek, a poor ogre and ugly princess fall in love. Then they have to cut through the hype of what they think they should look like, let go of their hang-ups and accept themselves and each other before they can have a happy ending.
It was an important message for everyone: but it didn’t get through. Eight years on, media messages of unrealistic acceptability are still so pervasive that countless women and men attempt to reduce themselves to warped standards of beauty, handsomeness, thinness and muscle mass. The result is an epidemic of people young and old whose attempts to conform physically lead to anorexia, bulimia, depression and even suicide—while often those who fit the bill shun those who don’t.
But society’s definition of physical beauty isn’t the whole problem, said local nurse Kathie Billing, who has decided to do something about this epidemic by helping to bring the award-winning documentary Beautymark to ASU’s Farthing Auditorium on Thursday, September 24.
Society’s other unreal expectations lead to people being driven to appear to succeed—so that the nation ends up with people overspending money they don’t have to live up to an image they don’t fit, or with scandals such as ponzi schemes, Billing said.
So even though the movie is ostensibly about the effects of dealing with eating disorders, its implications cast a much wider net, she said.
Billing’s friend, former athlete Diane Israel, is executive producer, co-producer and co-writer of the movie. She will attend the screening and answer questions afterwards.
“This movie is about being a real human being,” she said in a telephone interview. “It is trying to say to Americans, ‘you are not alone in your struggles, in your limiting beliefs and don’t let this stop you from the work and the service and the uniqueness that you are. Get out there, get out of yourself and do what you are meant to do.’”
The former triathlete is now a professor in transpersonal psychology at Naropa University in Boulder, Colo. When making the movie, she found she couldn’t truthfully do it without appearing in it herself and facing her own eating disorder and over-athleticism. She described this as a “raw” experience.
“I see human potential as so incredible, yet I see how we get caught and [become] so limited by our beliefs and behaviors. We focus on the negative and limitations,” she said.
Billing and ASU have been working through a “town and gown” committee for some time to bring the movie to Boone. High Country Women’s Fund is also supporting the presentation.
On September 25 there will be a bring-your-own-lunch public forum session with Israel at the Wellness Center from noon to 1:30 p.m. Admission is free
For more information, click to www.beautymarkmovie.com or call 828-265-9553
Want To Go?
Date: Thursday, September 24
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Location: Farthing Auditorium
Cost: Free
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