Student Spotlight: From the Outside In

In the first week of his freshman year, Jameson Hsu sat in the dorm room of fellow freshman Angel-Emilio Villegas describing an idea for a personal photography project. After struggling with body image issues and bulimia, Hsu, a freshman majoring in business of cinematic arts, wanted to spark a change in society to support everyday beauty.

After a while, Hsu realized that he was looking at the first subject of his project. He asked permission to take Villegas’ portrait, and challenged him to think of what he considers beautiful. During the photoshoot, Villegas kept his answer in mind and allowed Hsu to photograph his idea of beauty. Two weeks ago, Hsu made the first post of a project that soon became a big part of his future.

Hsu’s project, “reDEFINE your BEAUTY,” launched two weeks ago on his Instagram, @jameson_hsu. His goal for the project is to redefine beauty and allow people to take part in that process. Growing up, Hsu saw people in magazines and on the internet advertise a certain brand of unattainable beauty. This influence affected the way he saw himself and saw beauty.

Hsu believes people should feel beautiful for who they are, which is something he wished he was able to do when he was younger. At 16, Hsu struggled to appreciate his own appearance. When compared to the media’s perception of the perfect body, he didn’t feel like he was good enough.

In high school, Hsu had a group of friends who he looked up to for their perfect bodies. He didn’t understand how they achieved this. Later that year, he found out from his friends that they were able to achieve their envious bodies through fasting. After learning this, he felt fat for eating all three meals of the day.

He began to question if he could be good enough for society’s standards. In the spring of his sophomore year in high school, he looked in the mirror and felt ugly. He wasn’t happy with his identity. He didn’t see what he wanted. Instead he saw a fat, gay Asian man. He took the advice of his peers and began skipping meals and excessively exercising to achieve the body type he saw in the ads. In the morning, he slept through breakfast, forgetting the meal entirely. When he woke up, he exercised and rewarded himself with his first meal of the day. He was trying to achieve an impossible standard.

His routine escalated. He was fasting more often and eating less. He went through the entire day without eating a thing. However, the day would end in the kitchen, his feet flat on the cold floor and his hands grasping anything in his vicinity. He binge ate as much as he could. He binge ate until he couldn’t anymore and threw it all up. When it ended, he felt disgusted in himself. His memories of bulimia haunt him and continue to largely influence his mental stability.

“It contributes to my social anxiety [because] if I eat, I feel kind of fat and bloated,” he said. “There was this thing within me that, like, I would have to vomit, and not by force. My body would feel like it would instinctively have to.”

After sophomore year, Hsu got help from his high school therapist. He became more comfortable speaking about his struggles and understanding how his ideas of beauty are heavily adapted from the media. He was able to grow from his therapy sessions. Now that he is a freshman at USC, he is able to look back on his struggles with a new light. He now knows that he isn’t the only one who has struggled with body image.

“When I think back to that moment, I kind of, I guess suppress it,” he said. “How could I have ever thought of myself in that light when there are so many people that will go through the same thing as me? I felt so helpless at the time, and I want to be the person that reaches that hand to someone who was like me in that point in time. I definitely think I’ve come a long way.”

Hsu said he wants this project to allow people to see true beauty, not the beauty they are told to embody.

“No one should feel like they should be up to the unrealistic standards of what the media portrays,” Hsu said. “I want people to be able to accept themselves at any point of the day. There is not one way to be beautiful. Anyone should be able to feel like they can be in a beautiful picture if they want to.”

For this project, Hsu finds diverse people on campus to become part of his project. When looking for his next subject, he only looks for diversity. The person does not have to be part of USC. Hsu tries to get photos of people of all genders and ethnicities. Each day he approaches someone new and explains his project to them before asking permission to take their portrait. He will lead them to a new spot and ask them to pose naturally in a way that allows them to feel beautiful. He then starts snapping photo after photo until he achieves the one that perfectly showcases their beauty.

At the end of the photoshoot, he gives the person his social media information so that they can see the end result. He transfers the photos to his phone, then uploads them to Instagram, only editing for saturation and brightness. In the description of each photo is a quote from the person about their own definition of beauty.

When he first started the project, Hsu struggled to find a way to fix the problems of beauty standards that he saw in society. He knew he wanted to be the one to spark a change, but didn’t know where to start. He knew he couldn’t reverse the media’s ideology on beauty and change the fact that advertisements that surround us everyday promote unattainable standards for how people should look. Instead, he decided to make use of what he had. This past summer, he came up with the idea to make use of his social media platform and use it to showcase his project.

For the project, Hsu wanted to make a practical use of photography that would alleviate this problem in society. In mainstream photography, he saw conventionally beautiful people showcased for the public, but he wanted to change that. He didn’t want people to think that only people who looked a certain way could be showcased in a photograph; anyone can be beautiful — they just need to be normalized in media.

“By taking a picture in that moment without letting that person prepare, they are able to accept themselves at any point of the day,” he said. “There is not one way to be beautiful.”

The response to the project has been overwhelmingly positive. People on social media have loved the photographs, the description and the project itself.

“It’s spreading a really positive aspect on life and people,” said Skyy Rouse, a freshman majoring in accounting and one of the students featured in Hsu’s project. “He wants to get a wide range of people to portray society as a whole. This is something anyone can look forward to and relate with.”

Hsu wants to continue this project for as long as he can. However, he is unsure where it will go. If he gains enough popularity, he is planning to make a separate Instagram account for the project, or make a Facebook page. Hsu does know that he wants to keep the project online. He wants to keep it virtual so it may be accessible to anyone. Hsu worries that if he were to bring it to an art gallery, only people interested in the subject of beauty would be able to see the project. By keeping it online, anyone can come across it.

Hsu hopes that people of different backgrounds are able to see his project and hopes to have an influence on someone’s life. He wants his project to let people know they are beautiful the way they are and to help those struggling with eating disorders and body image issues the same way he did. He wants them to appreciate their everyday beauty.

“You are you all day,” Hsu said. “And you shouldn’t have to feel like there is only one way to be accepted as beautiful.”