Just Be You.

Young girls consume an immense amount of advertisements daily and magazines contribute their share. When girls see these images in magazines, they feel that there is a possibility for them to achieve this perfection, when in reality, those images are all digitally enhanced. Many ads portray images of women that can permanently affect the way girls look at themselves. The ads are created in order to persuade consumers that the products must be bought to achieve the look. In this case, the consumer would have to drink ONLY this brand water to get a slender body like the model.

The saddest part of it is that girls are not educated about what takes place behind these ads until later in life. My two 14 year old girl cousins were looking at the magazines we had at my house one day, and they asked me about the perfected images of the models. Although they were technologically updated, I was surprised that they did not know the power of photoshop. This experience really inspired me to create this fictional video production piece about a teenage female student who is given the chance to show an interest in magazines. Not only does she begin to question her own body image in accordance to the ads she saw, she is also pressured by her mom and the Chinese culture where it is a MUST to be skinny. The storyline is based upon personal experiences that my sister and I have had (although the video IS exaggerated to some extent). I chose this topic because I believe that many girls can relate to the situation in one way or another.

For the magazine, I chose the name "Outer Eye" because I felt that girls begin to worry too much about how everybody outside of their private life see them. They want to look a certain way to please the eyes of the outside world other than their own. Young girls are beginning to care about their body image too early in their life that they forget what's important. The world we live in today constructs different images for girls to follow. In my opinion, it is important for girls to focus on just being themselves rather than chasing images they see.



I want to take the chance to thank all the people who participated in the project (my camera-people and actors). Special thanks to Danielle Elizabeth Chin for composing and performing the music in the video.