North by Northwestern

After reading an article about a photographer who murdered a model, something struck — and stuck with — Darryl Roberts, writer and director of How U Like Me Now. Roberts asked 200 women if they felt beautiful or attractive; only two said they did. These interviews inspired Roberts to a five-year study of human frailty and the conventions of beauty, as explored in his new documentary, America the Beautiful. Roberts held a Q&A session after an advanced screening of the documentary on April 10 at the Block Museum.

Investigating everything from the chemicals in makeup to plastic surgery, the topics, characters and conclusions are more shocking and memorable than any fiction could invent. The documentary focuses on a supermodel named Garren. She’s more than six feet tall and incredibly skinny, which makes sense for a supermodel — but Garren is only 12 years old. The camera follows her on the runway, through middle and high school, ending with her fall from stardom. The juxtaposition of her playful adolescence with her sleek runway look makes the audience second-guess the “ideal” form that appears on magazine pages.

One of the things Roberts discovers is that it’s more about money than looks. Listen to Roberts explain how capitalism has fostered the “beauty myth”:

Personal anecdotes and Roberts’s voice mollify what could be a preachy social statement. His soft-spoken narration is often intimate, such as when he discusses the woman he left when he thought he could find someone more beautiful. When he interviews his subjects, he seems less like a determined documentarian and more like a friendly guy just trying to understand a complicated issue. He never moralizes or looks too far into things, and he doesn’t play the documentarian-hero like Michael Moore.

Perhaps the documentary flows so well because Roberts did not originally intend to use his own voice. “The film was disjointed and we needed a narrative thread to bring it all together,” he said.

Unintentionally hilarious interviewees also keep the documentary from becoming a somber social statement. Roberts, a Chicago native, said he was interested in incorporating humor because he used to study comedy at The Second City and Improv Olympics. The humorous characters — meet a young man who cannot justify why he needs a six pack — make a poignant contrast to more serious characters, such as a mother who laments her role in the death of her bulimic daughter.

America the Beautiful makes viewers want to believe in a world where beauty isn’t skin deep. Listen to Roberts talk about one of the most shocking points of the film, where a man maintains that lighter skin is more attractive than dark skin, and agrees to apply makeup to make a black woman look white:

But as Roberts admitted, it’s not easy to ignore glossy pages filled with supermodels and celebrities. “Advertisers are bombarding and inundating you so heavily with messages that it’s absolutely hard and it will take an absolute conscious effort [to change things],” he said.

America the Beautiful is not designed to raise the self-esteem of high school girls or to stop plastic surgeries (although it might do just that). It’s a powerful call to action in a simple way: it asks every American to tell his neighbor something as simple as “You have a beautiful handshake,” which is what Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers once told Roberts. It’s a beautiful documentary with a beautiful message. Listen as Roberts talk about what he would like to happen after people see the film:

Overall Rating: A