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A Girl Like Me (2005) Online

A Girl Like Me (2005) Online
Original Title :
A Girl Like Me
Genre :
Movie / Documentary / Short
Year :
2005
Directror :
Kiri Davis
Writer :
Kiri Davis
Type :
Movie
Time :
7min
Rating :
6.8/10

I wanted to make a film that explored the standards of beauty imposed on today's black girls. How do these standards affect her self-esteem or self-image. Through making this film I learned... See full summary

A Girl Like Me (2005) Online

I wanted to make a film that explored the standards of beauty imposed on today's black girls. How do these standards affect her self-esteem or self-image. Through making this film I learned a lot about where some of these standards might stem from.


User reviews

Malarad

Malarad

Kiri Davis has addressed some things that SHOULD be talked about much more--and these are the cultural standards that make black women seem less than ideal. In other words, pop culture (movies, magazines and the internet, among others) seem to say that black women are BEST if they are lighter-skinned, have straighter hair and act 'less black'. This is such a wonderful thing to address as it's horribly stupid to make value judgments based on such superficial and stupid standards. The impact of this on all black women (light and dark skinned) is discussed--some of this through interviews with YOUNG* black women as well as a discussion of Dr. Kenneth Clark's social psychology experiment that showed kids (black and non-black) would favor white baby dolls**.

If you'd like to see this short, get the DVD entitled "Sixth Media That Matters Film Festival". As for me, I'd love to see more work from this clever woman.

*My only complaint about the film, and it's very minor, is that we only heard from young black women. I really would have loved to have heard from a broader age spectrum, though I cannot fault the filmmaker as I assumed she mostly interviewed students at her school. Plus, this is her only film credit--so I don't want to demand too much from her. She did a great job as it is.

**Although in the 1960s experiment, kids did strongly favor white dolls, I'd love to see a large study try to replicate the results today. I assume (hopefully) that the results would be much different today--and just interviewing a few kids today doesn't really do Clark's study justice. For a doctoral or masters level psychology graduate student, this would be a great dissertation of thesis topic.