Noting the power of a six-inch Barbie doll to breed unhealthy beauty standards in young girls throughout the country, the 20 students involved in Dartmouth's newly formed Real Beauty Initiative aimed to humorously readdress Barbie's body-image standards with their newly purchased 7'2'' "life-sized" Barbie, complete with a 40-inch bust and 22-inch waist.
The group, which announced its presence on campus this term with a colorful exhibit in the Collis Center and promotions for its first dinner event, hopes to start campus-wide discussion on healthy and unhealthy concepts of beauty.
"Having a negative body image detracts from all areas of life," Kelly Everhart '09, the project's student intern and leader, said. "From confidence and friends to success in interviews and personal choices, the implications of a negative body image for anyone -- male or female -- are numerous and certainly unique to that individual."
Everhart described her general vision for RBI as a campus-wide extension of the eating disorder peer advisors' mission, to help peers suffering from eating disorders deal with their body-image issues.
"Attendance at EDPA events suffers from the stigma that many people have about eating disorders," Everhart said. "So we want to use the Real Beauty Initiative to bring the EDPA goals and perspectives to the entire campus and foster discussion about body image, and we want to help people form their own definition of beauty."
Last term RBI decided to make use of EDPA and Sexpert's relatively large campus presences to build a membership base, Everhart said. The group set up a booth at both organizations' events and asked passers-by to write their definitions of beauty on index cards. Those varying definitions are now posted in a display next to the Collis information desk.
"The exhibit serves the dual purposes of prompting people to reconsider their conception of beauty and attractive bodies and introducing the Real Beauty Initiative to Dartmouth," Everhart said.
This term, RBI will hold four or five community dinners and forums, led by experts in relevant fields, Everhart said. The forums will address a variety of perspectives on health and social perception of beauty.
In the coming months, experts ranging from the curator of the Hood Museum's current exhibit on African-American women to a reconstructive surgeon from Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center will speak at open campus dinners, according to Tessa Tyson, East Wheelock cluster community director and liaison with Health Resources. The first dinner is next Monday with guest Sarah Berger, director of the fitness center.
Men are welcome to attend RBI discussions and events, but the group's mission specifically addresses female standards of beauty and the media's portrayal of females, Tyson said. Tyson and Everhart agree that body images affect males as well, but that RBI needs to build its member base and campus reputation before they expand into more complex discussions, they said.
"The problem is that there's kind of a dual stereotype," Everhart said. "In order to be an attractive man's man, males have to work hard for a buff body without discussing their body image or any pressure they feel about it, while women are more likely to be encouraged to discuss such things ... I'd certainly like to see us broaden in gender focus. But we'd have to create an environment where men could talk about body image -- it doesn't make sense to have a bunch of women discuss male body image."
