Three San Jose college students are among the many winners of this 12 months’s Be-You-tiful contest, sponsored by the Campbell-based Consuming Problems Useful resource Middle (EDRC). The annual contest requested Bay Space center and highschool college students to share their ideas on how social media impacts physique picture and general effectively being.
Presentation Excessive College junior Tanya Solar used a picture that went viral even earlier than social media for her contest entry, which gained second place in the highschool artwork class. For “Transparency,” Tanya used a 1985 Nationwide Geographic cowl photograph of Afghan refugee Sharbat Gula because the jumping-off level for her art work. Gula’s photograph appeared within the journal once more in 2002 after photographer Steve McCurry tracked her down and verified her id.
“Her image…turned an emblem for social change and overseas assist organizations in Afghanistan. It unfold all through social media and have become a widely known image in my childhood,” Tanya wrote in her artist’s assertion. “Nevertheless, this picture fully uprooted her life.”
After being deported from Pakistan in 2016, Gula was evacuated to Rome in 2021 after Afghanistan fell to the Taliban.
“By ‘Transparency,’ I take advantage of Gula’s story for instance of how the media’s depiction of others’ narratives may be removed from the reality, and that it will probably create subsequently dangerous results on people,” Tanya wrote. “Media usually modifications the story to suit the narrative it needs to painting, as proven by the inexperienced devices of media (cameras and telephones) working to scrub Gula within the shade. Within the course of, actual people who find themselves depicted are sometimes harmed or made to doubt their very own fact, and they’re seen in a lightweight which isn’t their very own.”
Within the essay and poetry class for center faculty college students, Stratford San Jose Center College seventh-grader Alexis Santosa tied for second place with Shrijani T. Hongal, a seventh-grader at William Hopkins Junior Excessive College in Fremont.
In her poem, “My Thumping Coronary heart,” Alexis describes being confronted with social media pictures that make her doubt her personal self-image: “Pink spots on my face left and proper had been all I might see/But the display confirmed solely perfection/I by no means knew that magnificence was not an actual reflection/And determined a masks would conceal these imperfections.”
The poem additionally addresses how disordered consuming can come from this self-doubt: “As I run to the toilet choking/Up my lunch/I have to preserve down the digits on the dimensions/Regardless of how a lot/I’m dying inside.”
In keeping with the EDRC, As many as 30% of ladies and 16% of boys in American excessive faculties endure from disordered consuming.
Leland Excessive College junior Natalie Shin makes use of knitting as a metaphor in her poem, which took second place within the essay and poetry class for highschool college students: “Each sew, each motion I make,/There’s holes and errors./However others appear so put collectively./Going to the gymnasium,/Waking up at 5 a.m,/Being as productive as ever.”
“Not Simply Knitting” additionally advocates self-acceptance: “My sweater’s not sparkly and dazzling,/Nor does it brightly shine./But it surely’s snug./It’s mine.”
All second-place winners within the Be-You-tiful contest’s varied classes had been awarded $200. First-place winners acquired $300 and third-place winners, $100.
