Hollywood Gave Me Unrealistic Standards For Beauty
I was 7 when his curvy-frame sparked something deep within me. I couldn’t describe it because I was young and I didn’t quite know how to articulate complicated adjectives. But there was something that drew me to him. I longed for his detached eyebrows, his comically-large gloved hands and how his face took up roughly one quarter of his body. While he didn’t have any genitalia per se, I respected how he never hid the mystery under the social-construct of pants. He had sleek edges for days, no visible cellulite. He was, in every sense of the word: flawless. “Daddy, look,” I exclaimed pointing to the jaundiced visage on the TV screen, whose insides were composed of milk chocolate, a singular peanut, and a heart for making children smile, “I’m going to be like him, one day.” Everybody was all about the red one, I couldn’t care less. Red was all flash, no substance. But the yellow one. Oh, the yellow one, had that certain “je ne sais quoi,” that appealed to my child-like wonder and imagination. Many boys my age wanted to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a contractor that flips abandoned Pizza Huts into haunted abandoned Pizza Huts (Jared was a weird kid), but not me. I wanted to be the legume-centered embodiment of beauty that was, Yellow.
“Daniel, there’s no way, scientifically, for your body to become 87% chocolate. Clinically-speaking, you would be dead. This pipe dream needs to stop. I’m not joking,” my dad would say, jokingly. But what is science, really, but years of research conducted by highly-trained professionals in a controlled environment to prove a point as fact. I scoffed at the notion. I dared to dream; dared to be great; dared to be the Costello to Red’s over-exposed Abbott.
I was 19, a fresh-faced biology major, my skin the hue of a midday sun by denying myself important nutrition for close to 2 decades in hopes of matching the hard-candied exterior of my idol’s. Dr. Lowry, the professor of my A&P class, confirmed the reports I had long been denying: it’s scientifically impossible for a human being to become a CGI-character created by the Mars corporation to sell smiles and sugar. I was devastated. “But, he has a face, legs, and arms. I, too, have those things. I’m so close,” I would exclaim before being reduced to tears. Denial, turned into depression, which transitioned to anger. “I believed in you, Yellow!” I lamented in between exhaustive sighs. I spent the next two years knee-deep in life lessons and soul searching.
I’ve since recovered through years of therapy, medication, and getting myself the proper nutrition I had refused against my doctor’s orders.. I’m stronger now, and have decided to use my journey as a platform to advocate for those that can’t. I demand action. The glitz and glamour of Hollywood has a responsibility to America’s youth to convey the message that they are setting unrealistic standards of beauty for our youth. No child should have to live with the hope that they too can possess the rich, chocolatey center our make-believe heroes possessed. Sure a woman can, and should, have the same right to become a Ghostbuster or President, like any man, but we shouldn’t be so quick to accept the pundits’ claims that we can grow up to be anything we want to be. It’s not true. So consider this a call to action. We either need to invent the technology to transform a wide-eyed, hopeful kid, into a wider-eyed, talking movie theater treat, or demand that media start portraying beauty in a realistic and attainable standard.
