“America The Beautiful 3: The Sexualization Of Our Youth” opens in Chicago this week. The DePaulia sat down with Darryl Roberts, the director of the documentary series, which focuses on beauty, thinness and sexualization, to learn about latest project.
The DePaulia: This is a very important issue that your documentary touches on, but why release it now? Why not a few years ago?
Darryl Roberts: Well, to be honest, I really didn’t think about it a few years ago. In the last two to three years, because of cell phones and accessibility through technology, this whole sexualized image in advertising is getting worse and worse. I thought it was really getting bad, and it was spurred by a report that the American Psychological Association did, The Sexualization Of Girls, that said the amount of sexualized advertising is causing a mental health crisis. That statement pointed me towards that material.
In your documentary, you elaborate a bit on beauty pageants happening, especially in the south. Would you say that’s a body image issue that focused primarily in the south?
DR: Oh it definitely happens more in the south, but what I can’t figure out is why it happens more there. Some say it’s because of the image of the southern belle, but it definitely appears to be a cultural phenomenon.
One of the women in your film says that the girls love the beauty pageants, but then you clearly see the girls crying backstage, not wanting to be involved. Can you elaborate more on what else you encountered at these events?
DR: When I was backstage, and I made a reference that it felt like a slaughterhouse, these girls were lined up, and they didn’t want to go out on stage; they were crying. But the mothers don’t care. When they hear their child’s name called, they physically push them out on stage.
You could see them crying in front of the audience. Sometimes they were dragged on stage, it was practically child abuse. It’s baffling how it’s legal for these things to happen, and I don’t understand why child services don’t show up to these pageants, because it’s very abusive. Now the following day, I noticed they had a category that was “0-2”, and I asked the organizer what that meant. She told me that pregnant mothers go and get an ultrasound picture, and those pictures are judged. As a nation, we’re going crazy.
So in that respect would you say that the parents are more responsible for the sexualization of children?
DR: Oh absolutely, the parents are forcing their children because of the reward they’re getting out of it.
You have two interns that you show in your film. What led you to bring them aboard?
DR: Well, my one intern Cali, tried to commit suicide, went to the hospital, and while there she saw my first America The Beautiful documentary, got out of the hospital, and told her mom what a positive influence it had on her. So her mom wrote me, saying how they wanted to meet me. So I met with them, and noticed how bright she was, and asked her if she wanted to intern with me. And then my other intern Caitlin was in Kansas City for a screening of my first documentary, and she came up to me afterwards, and said she’d like to work with me. So when I started working on this one, she asked me again, and I said come on down. They both did a lot of research for me, Cali worked on the pornography data in my film, and Caitlin did a lot of the body image research; they were both functioning members.
Do you feel America is worse than it has ever been in terms of body image issues and advertising? Is there room to change?
DR: Well it’s definitely worse than it’s ever been, because of how much accessibility there is. An example would be, if someone tells you today that they’re addicted to porn that means they have access to as much as they want all day, because of the Internet. When a person thirty years ago said they were addicted to porn, it meant every other week, if they were lucky, they could sneak their father’s Playboy from under the bed and look at it.
There’s a big difference in how much can get out to the public and how much children can be exposed to. As far as stopping it, we have the issue of advertising being reinforced by sex symbols and celebrities, and being shoved upon large groups of people. We now believe that we should behave in the ways that these people are in these ads. But what we should do as parents, and as people in general is educate our youth, teach them to be individuals, independent and critical thinkers, and have an individual thought process different from the norm. With that, advertising doesn’t work. In the past we had the advantage of the media teaching kids the same values parents were supposed to teach their kids. Now we’re not so lucky. Parenting has to become more on point, we need to teach the same values.
Would say in that respect that America has lost its morality?
DR: There’s a statement that I absolutely believe, which is “America is in a state of moral decay”. I 100 percent believe that.
Your documentary builds on itself and goes from one point to the next very deliberately. Was this a pace you always wanted to go with?
DR: Yes, because I like to do what I like to call “Connected Vignette Structure” as opposed to a single topic structure. I wanted my documentary to be a stream of consciousness. I wanted one topic to lead to the other, and get more intense and involved as it progressed.
Do you feel America’s youth has been poisoned more by the ads of today, or do you feel it’s been a constant evolution and even the past is to blame?
DR: It’s definitely an evolution, probably going back to the ’70s or ’80s. When Brooke Shields did that Calvin Klein ad at 15, it wasn’t nude, but at the time, based on where we were spiritually as a nation, it was definitely shocking. But what you didn’t have was Brooke Shields and fifty other people doing it. You didn’t have the same repetition, so you didn’t have the same harmful effect. But when that happened, then more people started to do it, and it became an evolution. You have to understand that when it happens, it makes you more desensitized for the next time it happens, so it’s been kind of chipping away for the past few decades.
If you could say one thing to the youth of America regarding your documentary, what would you say?
DR: You have to strive to be an individual and find your personal greatness, because everyone has this greatness that’s not being developed because the media hasn’t set up our culture for that. I think that each teen’s future is based on individualism and not giving into the pressure of body image as presented by the media. Find your greatness. You definitely have it.