America The Beautiful Is Akin To Bigger, Stronger, Faster

Two documentaries tell the personal stories of young Americans to illustrate America’s obsession with the airbushed, unattainable and superficial standards of physical beauty that have been screwed into our national psyche by magazines and advertising campaigns, and other popular media.

In America The Beautiful, Geffen Taylor, who soars to supermodel status at age twelve, is emotionally traumatized when, at age fifteen, she’s kicked off the fashion runway because her hips have become too wide.

And, in Bigger, Stronger, Faster, filmmaker Chris Bell reveals how his own bodybuilding family is hooked on anabolic steroids that pump them up and enhance their performance at competitions--and impair their health.

These important, well-made documentaries hold a mirror up to America’s self-inflicted issues of unrealistic self image and low self esteem. You should see them, even though the pictures they paint of a population suffering from anorexia, bad plastic surgeries, deformed musculature and other such abnormalities ain‘t exactly pretty.