Turning Beauty Inside Out

As a teacher at a local high school, I have learned as many lessons as I have taught. This weekend marked a particularly poignant lesson for me.

Last week, in the middle of a lesson about propaganda in the media, a verbal argument about something unrelated broke out in my classroom. I was shocked and brokenhearted when I heard things like "black" and "big lips" being used as insults. It was a perfect, but painful example of a logical fallacy we were studying: ad hominem (attacking a person rather than the issue at hand). The incident reminded me of a handsome young man, who constantly jokes about the deep shade of his skin but who privately expresses his insecurities about the same, and of another who has always believed he's "too black and too poor" to accomplish great things in life.

I decided to extend my lesson on propaganda with an adapted lesson from Teaching Tolerance called "Turn Beauty Inside Out." The lesson teaches students to critically analyze the media and the effects its messaging has on self image. I diligently started constructing the lesson, researching media, and compiling thought-provoking images of "beauty."

Meanwhile, I hesitantly agreed to be the subject for a college student's life-sized bust for her sculpting class. I smiled awkwardly and tried to act natural as she took 15 painfully close close-ups of my head, neck and shoulders. I cringed when I saw the pictures: the blemishes… no, they're ZITS, the double chin, and all the features I've hated about myself for as long as I can remember. I considered asking her to find another subject, hastily requested that she smooth out the chin and sculpt me without these "blemishes" and that she destroy the hideous photos immediately when she completed the project.

And then I went back to creating my lesson on turning beauty inside out. You probably already see what I had yet to see: I was getting ready to teach a lesson I could not apply to myself. I considered scrapping the lesson altogether but concluded that rather than chucking it, I would take the chance to apply the lesson and confess to my students (who I wish could see themselves with my eyes) that I too have a few things to learn.

Perhaps when I have a library named after me, this bust will become the centerpiece for its atrium. Perhaps I will proudly display it in my own home along with all my other… life-sized images of…. myself. Or maybe I will take a sledgehammer and bust it to pieces. In any case, as I told the artist, I want the sculpture to show me exactly as I am.