CAITLIN WHITE
Assistant Living Editor
Appearance. People come face to face with it every day, and not just in the mirror. All too often young women derive their worth from what others around them think of us, and specifically in Southern California, the way people look is the largest factor. The cultural value of beauty has been so integrated into peoples’s lives, that they hardly give this truth a second thought. But what has led to this shift in values among young women?
Junior Amanda Gordon, is from the state of Washington, and says she has felt the focus on physical beauty since she moved to Malibu.
“It is a natural desire of women to be beautiful,” Gordon said.
“But I have noticed that there is a lot more emphasis on beauty here. I personally didn’t feel the pressure right away, but the longer I am in Malibu, the more I notice it.”
The greater L.A. area has become the capital of the entertainment industry, modeling agencies, and eating disorder central. Girls everywhere seem to equate being beautiful with being waif thin.
But the reality is that fashion models are thinner than 98 percent of the population, according to the National Eating Disorder Association.
Sophomore Mariah Deal has also noticed the obsession with weight issues, and said she thinks it is sad.
“I don’t see why people think their body image is so much more important than anything else,” Deal said. “Their personality and who they are as a person is so important too, and should be looked at more than their physical appearance, whether they are thinner or larger.”
Where are women finding their worth these days? Is it in weight? And why should something that depends on so many different uncontrollable variables be what governs their value as people?
Women feel compelled to be thin, and base their entire significance on this issue.
Junior Keyla Vasconcellos from Virginia says the atmosphere here is completely different from her home state.
“Everybody is beautiful here, and it makes me feel self-conscious sometimes,” she said. “People didn’t care as much about what they looked like back home, here everyone watches what they eat like crazy. In Virginia we just ate whatever and didn’t think about it.”
These concerns are just some of a few voiced on Pepperdine’s campus. But as the concern remains hanging over the entirety of sunny southern California like a dark cloud, what is to be done about this epidemic?
“I just don’t understand why women think that in order to look successful, you also have to look like you’re starving,” Gordon said.
That is the question that Natalie Horne asked herself, as she examined her own struggles with appearance, beauty, and self- worth.
“I realized there was a big need on campus for addressing issues like self- esteem and worth, and where girls get that from,” Horne said. “There is so much focus here on appearance, and at Pepperdine on grades and everything too, so girls come here, and all the sudden they are expected to be smart and beautiful, and they just get overwhelmed.”
It was because of these issues that Horne had the vision to start the women’s group called “Phenomenal Women”, through her position on the student leadership team at Malibu Presbyterian.
“The name was inspired from a poem by Maya Angelou with the same name. It’s a poem that she wrote about herself,” Horne said. “And the reason why people are attracted to her, and it isn’t because of what she looks like, but who she is, and how she carries herself, her confidence. It just really spoke to me, and it seemed like the perfect name because of her confidence.”
The group was in place last semester, and met at Malibu Presbyterian one night a week. Among other activities, the group took the time to recognize unrealistic images in the media, and write to the actual publications these appeared in, affirmed each other verbally, and offered a safe place to come and be open about the issues they struggle with.
The first meeting for this week was held yesterday at Malibu Presbyterian at 8:30 p.m., and the second will be held next Wednesday, same time and place.
“The group is open for anyone to join in these first two weeks, but after that, we are going to close it,” Horne said. “We only close it because it makes it easier for girls to really feel connected and safe if they are meeting with the same women, and we all grow so close. I personally have experienced so much healing in uniting together with other women, and be open about what I deal with.”
Horne traveled abroad to Heidelberg during her sophomore year, and founded the group when she returned, at the beginning of her junior year.
“Moving to Malibu, even from Northern California, not even a different state, I immediately felt the pressure to be beautiful, something I hadn’t experienced before. And the more I talked to other girls about it, and I found that so many of us here feel the same way,” Horne said.
The road to an unhealthy obsession with fitness and eating can easily turn into an eating disorder, an epidemic that seems all too prevalent at Pepperdine. Too much focus on outward appearance can leave a dark void in the life of a young woman, andthis group certainly offers a beacon of hope.
“The entire goal of Phenomenal Women, is to get girls away from this mindset that their worth is dependent on how expensive their jeans are, whatever size they can fit into or if their make up is perfectly applied, and back to the reality that they are worth something because they are loved and valued by God,” Horne said.
The jumping off point for discussions in the group for this year will address the issues of living what you believe.
“It’s kind of like belief in thoughts versus belief in actions, and dealing with what your life and actions have to say about what you believe.”
Horne said, “I myself have been so convicted about this, and I think it is a really important thing for us to address.”
Junior Meredith Strong who attended Phenomenal Women meetings in 2006 said the group really helped her open up about her experiences.
“It was a really good experience, because it was just a small group of girls, and we were all able to feel comfortable around each other, and tell things about our personal lives, that you wouldn’t usually tell people,” Strong said. “For this upcoming year, I really look forward to meeting new girls, and learning from their experiences too, so I can better approach what I am going through.”
Senior Jenna Schiebermayer also found the group particularly helpful, when she was returning from overseas.
“Phenomenal Women impacted me so much personally, I had just come back from London, and the group was wonderful, because it was these girls I could really connect with,” Schiebermayer said. “What we talked about was really relevant to struggles I was going through at the time, and this helped to bring issues of women’s insecurities to life. God used these women to encourage and uplift me all last semester, and I’m so excited for it to start again.”
Last year, Phenomenal Women consisted of about nine regular members, but this year, the demand has been much larger.
“We have a lot of people expressing interest, of course it is hard to work everything out for schedules, but we have at least three times as many women as last year,” Horne said.
Pepperdine will certainly benefit from the presence of a small group determined to turn women’s minds back to within, where true beauty lies.
If you are interested or want more information, Natalie Horne can be reached at (925) 998-8223.
09-20-2007