[sl/intern/teen] Beauty, Real vs. Perceived?
I ran a workshop on beauty a couple of weeks ago called, “Beauty, Real vs. Perceived?” As Rafi will be glad to tell you, I had the hardest time coming down to one topic. I had several topics in mind, a few of them were: Feminism, social Darwinism, Marxist theory, Children’s Rights, and etc. With Rafi’s help I chose Feminism and thought of related topics. I looked at many old workshops that Global Kids ran previously as a premise for my workshop on inner beauty. I thought a lot of them had good ideas; when designing the workshop I thought about breaking it up into the traditional way a GK workshop is broken up into: introduction, icebreaker, activity, discussion, closure. Well, technically…I should have figured out a segue between the ice breaker and activity but I thought it flowed well nonetheless. I wanted to start off with introducing myself, and then go onto having everyone name one thing about their appearances they are very particular about—if there was any. Then go into an activity where they have to design the model person.
Now, you would think that because you have a workshop planned out you would be able to lead it pretty smoothly; considering you should already know what to do, right? So, so, so, so, so, so, so -> WRONG. I learned that improvising is probably my best friend when it comes to leading a workshop. When I was making the workshop I had expected more of a female crowd than a male crowd, especially since I feared that the word “beauty” in the title would lead to a gender inequality and the workshop would me dominated by females. However, to my astonishment (which is an understatement); I basically had an all-male turnout. Until the end, when one female came, but for the most part it was all male.
The first part of the workshop I really did not have to change too much, I introduced myself and the workshop, and asked them if they had anything they were particular about when it came to their appearances and they said they didn’t have anything like that for the most part. However, when the activity part came, and I sent them a note card filled with instructions on what they need to do for the activity—they all seemed to be disappointed by the long-ness of the instructions (although it was barely half a page long). The note card basically told them that they needed to come to a consensus on the model/perfect person as a group; they were given three options to about this: 1. make an avatar of that person, 2. everyone goes out and finds a person than convinces the rest of the group that they are the perfect person, and 3. simply list the characteristics that make a person perfect. I gave them about 3-4 minutes to read through the entire note card and decided that I would give them a freedom over what they chose to do as a project.
So I used Meghan’s pods and sent them up into the air so they could discuss which one they wanted to do. However, when I went up myself to remind them about the timing, I noticed they had lost focus…so I led them through what needed to be done; they voted that they wanted to use pictures, so I made everyone find a picture of who they thought was perfect. They found pictures of famous people, and people they knew personally and for the most part they justified their choices by saying that person was cool or funny. Although this was not the result I expected, it still fit in well with the workshop because it was on inner beauty. They for the most part listed personality traits instead of physical traits. That went pretty well, but I had to change my post-activity questions around a bit because of that. I asked them why they chose personality traits, and do they think the media portrays beauty in the same way. Most of them answered that the media was more focused on outer beauty, and that was a pretty good segue into the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty Commercial. They all liked it; some liked how realistic it was to everyone’s perception on beauty and others admired the editing skills it took in order to transform a person digitally, while still disliking the impurity behind it. I think after that the discussion became very intense—they were extremely intrigued by the commercial obviously. We closed out the workshop with naming what we liked about our inner beauty the most—and they had some creative responses. After that, the few that stayed, we sat around and just continued the conversation we started during the workshop and continued to talk about other things that were of interest to us. It was a great way to end the day~!
I really want to thank all the wonderful TSL residents that came to the workshop or dropped by, Lucky and BB for helping me test things out, Meghan for letting me use her pods/the island she worked so hard to beautifully design, and Rafi for helping me prepare for the workshop and helped me through the entire process. The workshop may not have been what I expected it to be, but I think it will be a great memory to take with me as I end my term as a GK Online Intern!
