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Giovanna Vance
Ever since I was about 5 years old, and can remember watching my mom frown
at her body in the mirror, I have known that my body was bad. If my mom,
the ballerina, who is 5'10'' and was barely over 100 pounds could find
something wrong with her butt, thighs, arms, back, chin, and eyebrows, then
surely none of me could be good enough either. Sometimes when I would look
back, I was tempted to blame her for my self-hatred. But somehow I always
knew that the problem was infinitely deeper than my mom and I.
In 2000 I took my first mass media class at my community college. We
watched Jean Kilbourne's video, Killing Us Softly, and picked ads apart,
finding the real message and hidden meanings. At last I had found the
problem! The media, specifically advertisements, were showing us unattainable ideals
of beauty and making us want to achieve them. They even made us believe we
could, by buying their products, of course! I knew I had to stop this; to spread the word that it's fake--all if it--and we should be happy with who we are and celebrate our differences. I wanted to make sure that women everywhere knew they could stop trying to look like the media's idea of beautiful and just be. But who am I? I would ask
myself. Just some pissed off woman, that's all I am. Who's going to listen
to me?
In this same class I did a project on the objectification of women in the
media, and used some offensive ads I had found on an amazing Web site called
About-Face.org. It wasn't until three years later, when the woman I began
babysitting for turned out to be the founder of About-Face that I got joined
the ranks.
The greatest difference in my life since I have been involved with
About-Face is that I know who I am in the media world; I am a consumer, and
advertisers need my money to keep making advertisements. So I get to choose
who gets my money. And I can't say that I love my body every day, but some
days I do. And as for the other days, well, that's what chocolate is for!
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