“You have a long face. Your eyes are small. Have you ever considered losing weight? Your legs are as thick as elephants’” — the list goes on. Many people have heard these types of comments, from others or from themselves. Although body image is a struggle for many of us, the pressure to meet beauty standards is unparalleled for teenage girls in particular.
Recognizing this issue, Lisa Ji ’22, Victoria Jiang ’22, Linsey Liao ’22, and Summer Xu ’22 founded iloveme, an organization that hopes to raise awareness of appearance anxiety among teens. Their project is composed of a research paper investigating the negative effects of beauty advertisement on teenage girls, as well as an art exhibition showcasing the pressure that teenage girls undergo.
Their online research surveys and informal street polls conducted in winter 2020 in Beijing sampled approximately 200 teen girls and revealed that only 6% of teenage girls are satisfied with their physical appearance, 81% would purchase beauty products because of advertising, and 70% have considered receiving plastic surgery after comparing themselves to the societal beauty standards.
“As teenage girls spend an increasing amount of time on online platforms, they are becoming more and more susceptible to unhealthy ads, which promote idealistic beauty standards that are unattainable,” said Liao.
“Our investigation demonstrated that beauty advertisements have severe influences on teenage girls’ perception of themselves, and this distorted standard of beauty — pale, skinny, and young — caused most girls to feel insecure about their appearance,” said Jiang.
After collecting evidence on this topic, the organizers created an exhibition highlighting appearance anxiety in hopes of spreading the message that girls should not be pressured to meet a specific set of beauty standards. They collaborated with two Beijing-based teenage artists, Dora Lin and John Sa. Lin has suffered from eating disorders for the past three years, while Sa has witnessed his friends struggle with appearance-relaed anxiety and felt an urge to advocate for change.
iloveme’s founding members decided on visual art as the most suitable medium for conveying their message. “Since appearance anxiety is amorphous in the sense that it is not specifically defined, we felt that art would be a good way to express this topic as it can depict anything the artist or the audience perceives,” said Liao.
In addition to raising awareness, the organizers hope to advocate for healthy eating habits and increased representation of body shapes and colors in advertisements. “We hope that people can stop craving the same beauty standard, but it is really hard to stop a culture immediately,” said Ji.
Two pieces — taking it off and jealousy — exhibited at the gallery hosted by iloveme, and a visitor applying crimson-red makeup to a bust of David. All photos courtesy of iloveme
