Three Indie Films That Challenge Conventional Beauty Ideals

As a woman growing up in America, I've always been on the receiving end of a barrage of images coming at me from television, billboards and magazines that tell me I'm not pretty, thin or stylish enough. So it's no surprise to me that organizations like the National Institute on Media and the Family report that the media's typical portrayal of women has a negative impact on girl's health and self-esteem.

Luckily, independent film makers have started to address this problem with films that look the beauty myth squarely in the face. Here are three recent films that I found via Women'sENews.org that do a good job of opening the dialogue and pushing for healthier depictions of women in popular culture.

1) America the Beautiful is a documentary that explores the question, "is America obsessed with beauty?" Um, I think we all know the answer to that one but the film does show how serious and widespread the obsession with perfection is in our country:

2) Beauty Mark was made by former world-class triathlete Diane Israel who tells her own story while interviewing other champion athletes, body builders, fashion models and inner-city teens about their experiences relating to self-image.

Diane won the Pikes Peak Marathon and several other major races after settling in Colorado in the early 1980s. She retired from competition after collapsing from anorexia (sometimes called  "athletic bulimia", a disorder many athletes suffer from, but which few experts knew anything about at that time):

3) DisFigured, "a movie about women and weight" is a fictional account of two very different women confronting deeply-buried feelings about their bodies: