Movie Review: Lovely and Amazing

Lovely and Amazing is a film about a woman and her three daughters, and all the insecurities and problems they are dealing with on a daily basis. The mother has a problem with her weight, she thinks she is fat and ends up getting liposuction, which puts her in a coma. She also thinks her doctor is hitting on her when he is just being friendly. The oldest one of her daughters is unhappily married and has two daughters, she is depressed and cynical and she suspects her husband is cheating on her. She gets a job at at one hour photo shop where she enjoys getting attention that her teenage co-worker gives her. She ends up in a relationship with him and enjoys herself until the boy's mother turns her in for statutory rape.
Her middle daughter is a model/actress and she has a boyfriend and lots of problems accepting her body the way it is. She is also constantly rescuing stray dogs, and the irony is that one dog that she tries to rescue actually attacks her and leaves her with scars and more "imperfections" to obsess over. Her boyfriend breaks up with her and she starts to date another actor who also has body image issues.
The woman's youngest daughter is adopted and is African American and she feels like she does not belong in the family. She wants to look like her family and even gets her hair straitened against her mother's wishes. The girl also has issues with her weight. She even plays dead in the pool like she drowned to get attention and calls another little girl fat.
This film has a lot of the themes that we have discussed in class. Body image is the most apparent though. They all have body image problems of some sort. The youngest has issues accepting her skin tone, weight, and hair. The middle daughter has issues with not feeling sexy after she goes for an audition and the people decline her for not being sexy enough. She also has numerous other problems with her looks. The oldest daughter is worried about her age and not being pretty when she accuses her husband of having an affair. Lastly, the mother has problems accepting her weight and age. This shows with the liposuction and face lift.
I think this film shows that everyone is Lovely and Amazing in their own way and they should not obsess on looking like someone else. When the mother tries to look thinner and younger, she goes into a coma. Then she is not there to take care of her youngest child. When the oldest tries to feel young and sleeps with the teenager, she goes to jail. She also does not pay much attention to what she has in front of her like her daughters and is so neurotic about the husband cheating that she pushes him away. When the middle daughter obsesses on the little imperfections of her body, she pushes away her boyfriend and cannot be comfortable in the audition with the cute actor. And the youngest daughter even runs away just to go eat McDonald's so that other people do not see her doing this because she is ashamed, so she is risking her life to hide her desire for food. It almost seems like the more they try to improve their looks, the more they do damage to their overall well being and happiness.
I really liked this movie and I am glad that we watched it. I think it does a great job of showing these aspects of the beauty myth in a negative light so that it does not seem so glamorous to go through all this trouble to change yourself. It also does a great job of showing that if you perpetuate the beauty myth and emphasize it, then the others around you will too. This shows in the way that the mother has so many problems accepting herself, and it rubs off on the daughters. So these and other women might want to take Naomi Wolf's advise and just be happy with what they have. Wolf says that women need to stop doing things they are forced to by society and just do what makes them happy and empowered.