President Caitlin Mattson's Post
One of the greatest experiences that I had while attending West Valley College was being a part of the Global Student Club. While I was the president of the club, we hosted an event called "Global Visions of Beauty". We presented on the different facets of beauty around the world and what it means to be considered beautiful in different countries and how far people will go to reach a certain level of beauty. For example, the Kayan tribe in Thailand is known as the "long necks" because they measure beauty according to the number of brass rings worn around their neck; in some Chinese communities, height is seen as a sign of status, so men will get leg-lengthening surgery that breaks their bones and stretches their legs to make them taller. This event really hit home to me because in America young women, including myself, often look up to celebrities and models who don't uphold the true meaning of beauty as their bodies are photo shopped to look picture perfect. Growing up, I never really considered myself to be beautiful as I am not tall nor skinny like the women in most magazines. The one thing that I hoped to convey the most at our event was that we are all the same universally. No matter where we are from or the color of our skin, we all hope to attain a certain level of beauty and to be considered beautiful. When it comes down to it what matters the most is not how we look on the outside but who we are on the inside. Who you truly are will always shine the most and being your true self is the most beautiful thing you can be. Secretary Aditi Prabhaar's Post This semester the Global Student Club was interested in global standards of beauty and we researched on standards of beauty around the world. We found examples of long necks being beautiful in Thailand and light skin being treasured in Southeast Asia. Although this research was very interesting, I was left wondering, "how does this affect me?" After all, how does a beauty standard in Ghana connect with my life? Our club discussed this as a whole and we realized that we wanted to create a connection with students at West Valley College. We realized that although it is easy to point out that women in India shouldn't be putting bleaching cream on their skin, no one really talks about how we also put harsh chemicals on our skin to achieve our American standard of beauty. Our eyeliners, blush, and foundations contain many chemicals and there is research that shows how this negatively affects our health. We realized that we wanted our message to be about how we all face a common global struggle to conform to our individual society's standard of beauty. The resulting psychological and physical harm is a uniting global issue. My favorite part about this discussion was when one of male club members, Mike Dunders, pointed out that females are not alone in this struggle. He showed us research on protein powders and body building supplements that men take to gain more muscle mass and these were also bad for health. When we presented this in West Valley College, the crowd was not very responsive to the first part of our presentation, which was on beauty standards in other parts of the world. There was an occasional giggle or gasp, but I think most people did not find a connection to their own lives. As we expected, people really began participating when we presented the second part of the presentation, which was about our own standards of beauty. This allowed them to make their own realization that humans really are connected on a global scale in our struggle to achieve an arbitrary standard of beauty.
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