Wrote an essay
Jun. 1st, 2011 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drownedinlight Thought I would share
Recently, I entered a contest called “Pretty Amazing,” sponsored by Seventeen Magazine. Quite honestly, I found out about the contest through Fastweb Scholarships, a website I am a member of to find scholarships for my college education. I poked around the admissions page and thought it might be worth a try to enter the contest, as they were giving away a $10,000 scholarship to the winner. But, I somehow felt it would be a long shot if I won. After all, this was not any sort of essay contest, rather a photo contest.
Still, I felt a little hopeful. After all, it was about taking the best picture and being honest with yourself. Despite my best attempts to locate a rules page (there is a link on the entry page, unfortunately, it only leads you to the “fun articles” page on the seventeen website, and on the contest page itself, I never had much luck), I never found anything beyond the actual entry page. So I decided to ask a photography major friend to take some pictures of me, and I would enter them with the incredibly short essay about myself that the contest asked for.
The essay really should have been my first clue that I was not the type of person they were looking for. A short essay to me is five hundred words. Maybe three hundred, if the scholarship contest is looking for you to be fairly concise. This essay was required to be no more than one thousand characters (including spaces). I shared this with my writer friends, and they all wondered how such a thing could be possible. How could you share anything about yourself in simply one thousand characters? This would be around one hundred fifty words; it would be a real challenge.
Admittedly I decided to be a little smart with the text box and wrote a short poem which went like this: “If I could say everything about myself in one thousand characters, I would not be much of myself at all. It would be like trying to describe a tiger, and only getting to the stripes.” All of my writer friends thought the concept was brilliant (they may not have liked my choice of image, but hey, it’s a metaphor and the tiger is me). Though, it would appear that the judges were not so amused, as I went to the website to day to find out that voting has opened for the top five to crown the cover page winner, and my picture was not up there.
My problem is not so much that this was a beauty contest. Seventeen is a fashion magazine for girls; of course it was a beauty contest. If it were not a beauty contest, they would have asked about our interests straight off, and let us tell more about ourselves. The prime focus was the two photographs you had to submit. I have a few issues with it, like what is the point of trying to empower young women and telling them in the same breathe that they must live up to the idealized standard of beauty? I mean, do not get me wrong, these girls are beautiful, and very uniquely so. They also seem like very goal oriented girls, and women who are going places (to borrow a phrase from my university), it also seems, though that Seventeen is not doing a whole lot to promote their talents and abilities. For instance, they have a video up about one of the contestants, talking about her photography. Great! What about the other women? There could be other circumstances here, but why can’t we see their essays? Why can’t we (the people who are voting, that is) know what these girls think about themselves, and what they are interested in at the very least?
But mostly I think my complaints with the “beauty contest” portion of “Pretty Amazing,” tie in with my main complaint. This contest was not organized very well. Like I said, I never found that official rules page, and there was also not a cut off entry date anywhere associated with this contest. I checked, because I wanted to know when I would need to have my pictures in. Also, on the very same page where you vote for which top five member you want to have on the cover of seventeen, they have an “enter now,” button. That seems fairly confusing, especially since this would seem to be, at most, a yearly contest, otherwise Seventeen might have trouble fitting in their usual celebrity pages.
This is all really stemming from my disappointment. All of this could easily be excused whatever way you like it. Maybe I did not win because I did not take a good enough photograph. Maybe I did not win because I did not find the mythical official rules page, or maybe my essay-poem was too quirky. But it still gets me that I did not get to share some of the most amazing things about myself. Yes, I would say that I am beautiful on the outside, my best features are probably my hair and my eyes, and even though I’m overweight, I feel great about the way I look. I feel like I fit in my own skin, that I’m God’s creation, what more could I ask for? But, why do my looks have to be the most amazing thing about me?
After all, something really amazing (and a little crazy) about me is that I write. I write all the time. In fact, I just recently made a pledge to write two-thousand words a day to help hone my craft and build up writing habits. That’s just as much a part of me as my blue eyes and dark brown hair. And why is it that plenty of books, movies and even magazines like Seventeen tell women that we are beautiful no matter what, that the most important thing is what is beneath our skin, that humility and grace win out in the end, but everyone must still perfect their outsides? It’s always driven me a little nuts I guess, and it most certainly is not Seventeen’s fault or this contest’s. But still I have to wonder, and ask a question which had been asked before: are we ever really going to get beyond skin deep?
Ah, well, back to the scholarship pool. College doesn’t pay for itself, though debt accrues not for lack of trying to keep it away.
Recently, I entered a contest called “Pretty Amazing,” sponsored by Seventeen Magazine. Quite honestly, I found out about the contest through Fastweb Scholarships, a website I am a member of to find scholarships for my college education. I poked around the admissions page and thought it might be worth a try to enter the contest, as they were giving away a $10,000 scholarship to the winner. But, I somehow felt it would be a long shot if I won. After all, this was not any sort of essay contest, rather a photo contest.
Still, I felt a little hopeful. After all, it was about taking the best picture and being honest with yourself. Despite my best attempts to locate a rules page (there is a link on the entry page, unfortunately, it only leads you to the “fun articles” page on the seventeen website, and on the contest page itself, I never had much luck), I never found anything beyond the actual entry page. So I decided to ask a photography major friend to take some pictures of me, and I would enter them with the incredibly short essay about myself that the contest asked for.
The essay really should have been my first clue that I was not the type of person they were looking for. A short essay to me is five hundred words. Maybe three hundred, if the scholarship contest is looking for you to be fairly concise. This essay was required to be no more than one thousand characters (including spaces). I shared this with my writer friends, and they all wondered how such a thing could be possible. How could you share anything about yourself in simply one thousand characters? This would be around one hundred fifty words; it would be a real challenge.
Admittedly I decided to be a little smart with the text box and wrote a short poem which went like this: “If I could say everything about myself in one thousand characters, I would not be much of myself at all. It would be like trying to describe a tiger, and only getting to the stripes.” All of my writer friends thought the concept was brilliant (they may not have liked my choice of image, but hey, it’s a metaphor and the tiger is me). Though, it would appear that the judges were not so amused, as I went to the website to day to find out that voting has opened for the top five to crown the cover page winner, and my picture was not up there.
My problem is not so much that this was a beauty contest. Seventeen is a fashion magazine for girls; of course it was a beauty contest. If it were not a beauty contest, they would have asked about our interests straight off, and let us tell more about ourselves. The prime focus was the two photographs you had to submit. I have a few issues with it, like what is the point of trying to empower young women and telling them in the same breathe that they must live up to the idealized standard of beauty? I mean, do not get me wrong, these girls are beautiful, and very uniquely so. They also seem like very goal oriented girls, and women who are going places (to borrow a phrase from my university), it also seems, though that Seventeen is not doing a whole lot to promote their talents and abilities. For instance, they have a video up about one of the contestants, talking about her photography. Great! What about the other women? There could be other circumstances here, but why can’t we see their essays? Why can’t we (the people who are voting, that is) know what these girls think about themselves, and what they are interested in at the very least?
But mostly I think my complaints with the “beauty contest” portion of “Pretty Amazing,” tie in with my main complaint. This contest was not organized very well. Like I said, I never found that official rules page, and there was also not a cut off entry date anywhere associated with this contest. I checked, because I wanted to know when I would need to have my pictures in. Also, on the very same page where you vote for which top five member you want to have on the cover of seventeen, they have an “enter now,” button. That seems fairly confusing, especially since this would seem to be, at most, a yearly contest, otherwise Seventeen might have trouble fitting in their usual celebrity pages.
This is all really stemming from my disappointment. All of this could easily be excused whatever way you like it. Maybe I did not win because I did not take a good enough photograph. Maybe I did not win because I did not find the mythical official rules page, or maybe my essay-poem was too quirky. But it still gets me that I did not get to share some of the most amazing things about myself. Yes, I would say that I am beautiful on the outside, my best features are probably my hair and my eyes, and even though I’m overweight, I feel great about the way I look. I feel like I fit in my own skin, that I’m God’s creation, what more could I ask for? But, why do my looks have to be the most amazing thing about me?
After all, something really amazing (and a little crazy) about me is that I write. I write all the time. In fact, I just recently made a pledge to write two-thousand words a day to help hone my craft and build up writing habits. That’s just as much a part of me as my blue eyes and dark brown hair. And why is it that plenty of books, movies and even magazines like Seventeen tell women that we are beautiful no matter what, that the most important thing is what is beneath our skin, that humility and grace win out in the end, but everyone must still perfect their outsides? It’s always driven me a little nuts I guess, and it most certainly is not Seventeen’s fault or this contest’s. But still I have to wonder, and ask a question which had been asked before: are we ever really going to get beyond skin deep?
Ah, well, back to the scholarship pool. College doesn’t pay for itself, though debt accrues not for lack of trying to keep it away.
