Lights, Camera, This is What Beautiful Looks Like!

,“If only I were four inches taller…,” “If only I were skinnier….,” “If only I had bigger breasts...,” “If only I had a smaller nose…,” “If only if only…”. For many young women, these thoughts accompany them in their daily lives and can even lead to harmful behaviors. From childhood to womanhood, a woman’s body is monitored constantly to fit a certain stereotype. Through the media, a woman is told how she should dress, look, and act. It becomes hard to reject these images the media tries to feed us. Dr. Kayann Short, a professor at CU Boulder in the Farrand Academic Program, realizes how media can be influential in shaping a person’s identity and confidence. She also sees the danger involved in exposure to stereotypical images bolstered by the media.  In response to such threatening images, she developed the Women’s Wellness Service Learning practicum for her ‘Coming of Age in Multicultural Women's Literature’ class. This is course is offered at the University of Colorado-Boulder, where students find innovative ways to reject the unrealistic and degrading images of women found in the media these days.

A brief insight on the Coming of Age Multicultural Women’s Literature course

This course approaches students’ learning by incorporating different literary genres to examine coming-of-age experience in works by women writers. Dr. Short states, “In this course, we analyze works of fiction, poetry, memoir, film and essay to study how girls from diverse backgrounds confront the social expectations regarding gender, race, class, religion, and sexuality that determine their transition from girlhood to womanhood.” It also explores ways in which students see themselves in the future in a society that doubts young women’s potential. She explains, “From classics like Anne Moody’s Coming of Age in Mississippi to the award-winning young adult novel Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, we examine how the discursive strategies of women writers create possibilities for artistic expression and social agency.”

Additionally, this course includes a service-learning practicum. Dr. Short and her students work with CU’s Community Health program to organize outreach events on topics such as breast cancer, nutrition, eating disorders, and the impact of body image on women’s health.

How it all started

Note to Self: This is What Beautiful Looks Like, a digital story about students’ positive representations of themselves, emerged spontaneously when Dr. Short and her students were brainstorming ideas for potential outreach projects for the Women’s Wellness service learning practicum. She states, “As the theme for the digital stories emerged organically from our conversations with CU’s Community Health about body image and their Rock Your Body Day event, I realized that each student’s input would be powerful when combined with the others in a collaborative digital story.” Consequently, her students seemed interested in making a digital story that rejected unrealistic and degrading images of women found in the media. They began with the question, “How can I feel good about myself when everything else tells me to feel bad?”

Each student wrote a scene from their own experience that reflected an answer to that question. Dr. Short then recorded their voiceovers as one script and added a musical soundtrack. After compiling all these scenes, she illustrated them with personal images picked by each student. She also included images from advertisements and from Community Health’s Rock Your Body event in March. The title came from visual “notes” that appear throughout the story. “For each scene, the students created a “note to self” that illustrated their own positive ideas,” said Dr. Short. She adds, “Given the short amount of production time, I edited the piece in Final Cut myself but we screened it as a class to make final editing changes together.”

Challenges faced while creating the digital story

According to Dr. Short, the students worked well together while creating the digital story. “Students were excited about creating something they could share not only with friends and family, but with a larger audience through social networking and public campaigns like Love Your Body Day,” she said. She mentions that the only challenge they faced was finding a quiet place to record since the location in which their class meets is a busy place.

The importance of technology in her class       

Dr. Short is aware of the important role of technology in teaching. According to her, the technology we use today is another tool that helps us accomplish some of the central goals of higher education: to think critically about facts, concepts, and ideas; to research and write about that knowledge; and to share findings with others. She states, “Because students today are immersed in media and understand its ability to communicate widely with a shared audience, it makes sense to use communication technologies as a mode of inquiry into course topics as well.” According to her, technology in the form of digital storytelling has allowed students to view and evaluate their experience in a new, multi-modal way.

Should other professors adopt digital story telling too?

Dr. Short recommends that other professors integrate digital storytelling into their teaching. She has used it in other classes both for student assignments and service-learning projects with community members.

One feature of digital storytelling that Dr. Short highlights is its ability to foster collaborative work. Dr. Short adds, “When the course doesn’t allow time for individual projects, having the students work collaboratively is wonderful because it involves them in group discourse, debate, and decision-making.”

Future goals and plans

The National Organization of Women selected the video created by Dr. Short’s students for their Love Your Body Day campaign. Students will be glad to hear that this video is also available on the CUs’ iTunes and YouTube. In addition, students are sharing this video on their social networks as well.

Dr. Short strongly encourages women of all ages to adopt alternative definitions of beauty rather than rely on corporate media sources.  “Our class also wants young women to examine the role appearance plays in their lives,” says Dr. Short. She adds, “We hope that Note to Self: This is What Beautiful Looks Like will inspire all of us to create messages reminding each other that beauty is not defined by what we don’t have, but rather by what already exists in our own hearts and minds.”

Written By Manaslu Bista, ASSETT reporter