How Does Little Miss Sunshine Relate To Belonging

Little Miss Sunshine Analysis
Gabriela Rogers
Mesa Community College

There are a few different factors that come together and affect a person’s concept of themselves. A person’s own thoughts and interpretations are an important part of what makes that up. Different influences like the culture that we are part of can also shape how we are and how we see ourselves, as well as influences brought on my our close family members and friends. Naturally we also look to those around us to see how we compare in contrast to how they are, and develop out self-concept from that.
In the movie Little Miss Sunshine, the main character is a young girl by the name of Olive who has the aspiration to compete in beauty pageants. From the beginning,
At first she seems to not be aware of America’s cultural pressure towards being skinny, which later comes to her attention because of her father’s comment about avoiding ice cream. Something that also put a definite cultural pressure on Olive was the importance America gives to being a winner, which her father magnifies. Her father seems to live trying to uphold the standard of ultimate success in everything, which he tries to engrain in Olive, making her doubt if he will think of her as a loser and hate her if she doesn’t win.
The opening scene of the film showed Olive standing before a TV, watching a tape of a pageant winner reacting to the announcement that she just won. In that scene she mimics the beauty queen, and by that, we can infer that she wants to be like her and compares herself to her in a way. After her dad’s comment about eating ice cream, Olive applied that to her situation, and even asks the beauty queen she meets at the pageant if she eats ice cream. Later on, she stood in front of a mirror and examined her own belly, showing that the weight comments really made an impact in the way she looks at her own