We just read “My First Conk,” from The Autobiography of Malcolm X, and got involved in a discussion of what beauty is, and what a person will go through to be “beautiful.” In the passage, Malcolm X expresses his own disgust at the length that black men (including himself) went through to fit a standard of beauty which equated “beautiful” with “looking white”:
“This was my first really big step toward self-degradation: when I endured all of that pain, literally burning my flesh to have it look like a white man’s hair. I had joined that multitude of Negro men and women in America who are brainwashed into believing that the black people are “inferior”—and white people “superior”— that they will even violate and mutilate their God-created bodies to try to look “pretty” by white standards.”
What followed was a great class discussion about what beauty is, who sets the standard of “beautiful,” and the lengths a person was willing to go through to find it. There's no shortage of resources on this particular topic – during my years teaching at a girls' high school, I became aware, through numerous research papers, of the various facts and figures regarding eating disorders and the obsession with fitness, so I, in the interest of novelty, decided to go a different path.
I remembered an episode of the National Geographic show Taboo entitled “Body Perfect,” which charted three vastly different cultures and explored the lengths people there went through to become “beautiful” by their standards – an Indonesian woman agreed to have her teeth filed to sharp points in order to appease her village spirits, a Beverly Hills man underwent surgery for (of all things) butt implants, and a Chinese man had his legs surgically broken and reset in order to become taller.
The episode is available on most streaming video services, including Netflix, and a preview of the episode itself can be found on National Geographic's educational video website:
The video is not too graphic (there are some surgery scenes, but nothing explicit), and I found it an interesting tool for getting students thinking about other cultures – I especially appreciate how, like many of the show's episodes, in included a distinctly American custom (in this case, Beverly Hills plastic surgery) as a means of comparison. All told, it's an interesting resource, althoguh best suited for older, more mature classrooms.
Some of my students used the video as a springboard to discuss their own and their culture's notion of beauty – as well as their commonalities. One student remarked that the Chinese fixation on height from the third segment, for example, was more or less universal – height is often associated with power and status. It opened their eyes to different cultures and ideas, while still giving them a reference point for their own.
All told, I would suggest this episode for any kind of discussion on health or beauty in which the educator wants to put a multicultural spin. The series in general is very good, although some topics are less appropriate than others.
Also, it's just plain interesting, even outside of class!
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