A popular movie, “Bring it on,” portrays a common stereotype of a cheerleader who wishes to always look pretty and skinny. Early in the movie, it encourages teens to worry about their physical appearance. The image of a teenage girl is a big problem in society because it can lower self esteem, lead to unhealthy habits, and create jealousy.
The storyline of this movie is simply cheerleaders getting jealous of other cheerleaders when they are better than the other. It can range from a prom scene of who wins homecoming queen to a cheer competition of which team cheats to win. This movie contains a lot of drama, because of dishonesty and jealousy which causes contention between each high school cheerleader. By the end, people forgive others and become friends again, and everyone is happy. It just takes a lot of fights and arguments to get to the happy ending.
In this movie, one of the cheerleaders tells another cheerleader that she has a big butt. She may not have meant to offend the “fat” cheerleader, but she took it as a hurtful comment and caused her to be a little more self conscious of herself. She looked around the cheerleading team noticing that they were all very skinny. Her body image moved to the top of the list of things to worry about. She started not to eat which caused her to be very unhealthy. In turn, it made her sick during a cheer competition. The rest of the team beforehand didn’t notice that she wasn’t eating, but after they saw her pass out, they all went up to her and ushered her that she looked fine before. They comforted her by telling her she didn’t have to stop eating to look pretty. They said it is alright to have a little chub. After this incident, she started to gain back her confidence that she used to have. She went back to perform at the cheer completion and unlike before, performed at her best. In society, you imagine cheerleaders always wanting to look their best, and always worrying about how skinny or fat they are. This movie is evidence of how we perceive not only cheerleaders, but a teenage girl to be emotional recks when it comes to appearance. Teenage girls always worry about what other people think of themselves, but they can’t accept who they are. This movie is also a perfect example of how friendships could get ruined, by words they say that could be hurtful, and by how they look. There have been many problems involving teenage girls of eating disorders and jealousy in today’s society. If everyone were comfortable with the way they were, all this emotional distress and unhealthy habits wouldn’t occur.
Source: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0490822/
Kelsi, I agree with you that many teenage girls are emotional wrecks about their appearance. I remember this part of the movie and I think it is unfair for other people to comment negatively on one's appearance, even if it was unintentional. But it's also not right for girls to be super insecure about their looks, and taking every comment too seriously. This movie is a great way to display how teens are scrutinizing themselves and not accepting who they are. I enjoyed reading your article too!
ReplyDeleteI agree with everything here, Kelsi, especially your last sentence. I think this film shows how much society cares about looks and appearance in general. A lot of the things we do are in some way tied to wanting to look a certain way. People are judged based on looks, and people know it, so they try to look a certain way so that they'll be judged a certain way. It's kind of a vicious cycle.
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