I Feel Pretty

I’ll start by saying – I LOVE AMY SCHUMER. I love her TV show ‘Inside Amy Schumer’. I love her roast of Charlie Sheen and I basically just love all of her work. So this review is going to be full of my bias, I don’t care, this is my website, take it or leave it.

I Feel Pretty is a 2018 ‘body swap’ film that breaks convention by never actually revealing the other body. Amy Schumer plays Renee Bennett, a woman who wishes she was beautiful. I think this particular ‘wish-club’ has a large membership, myself included, so I was very interested to see how it was handled.

Renee has an embarrassing fall on an exercise bike which causes her to be knocked out. Upon waking she see’s herself as an absolute knockout. This in turn affects the way she behaves towards other people, towards her ambitions and most importantly, towards herself. She loves herself. She is confident. She believes in herself.

And this makes me so very sad.

Why Camilla? Why does this make you sad?

This is a comedy movie after all. I’ll tell you why. It’s because I can relate. I’m looking at Amy Schumer, this blonde beautiful woman who is smart as hell and a total inspiration to me, and she is saying she’s not good enough. Because in this world, she isn’t.

Renee Bennett doesn’t apply for the receptionist job at a beauty company because she isn’t pretty enough. And she isn’t. Renee Bennett doesn’t get hits on a dating site because she isn’t pretty enough. And she isn’t. It initially makes me angry AT HER because i’m thinking – you are gorgeous, how can this beautiful woman be telling me she isn’t good enough?

But if I sit back for a moment, and take one look at the Hollywood level beautiful women that surround her, it becomes clearer to me that Amy Schumer does actually suffer for her looks. Not because she isn’t beautiful, but because beauty standards for women are near impossible, and thanks to technology, often literally impossible. The world around Amy Schumer and us all is constantly bombarding us with images that tell us we are not good enough, and if we put ourselves “out there” we will be laughed at and mocked for ever thinking we might be.

So Renee Bennett now believes she has met the impossible beauty standard. She is beautiful in her mind. The viewer is never given a glimpse as to what that looks like and I think thats really smart.

This newfound belief that she has met the social and cultural standards of beauty changes Renee’s life. She goes for that job. Her flirt game is on point. She assumes others see her as she see’s herself, beautiful. And it’s powerful. I’m not going to spoil the rest of the movie, but I do recommend checking it out.

This situation might be played for laughs, but this movie is trying to say something extremely important. This movie asks Women and Girls to imagine themselves as the most beautiful woman in the world, and act from that foundation.

It’s a form of self love and self belief.

‘I Feel Pretty’ is fighting the message that we can never be good enough, and saying, hey, the world around you isn’t fair, but you always own your own headspace, and against all odds, use the power of that beautiful brain of yours to believe in yourself. You can do it.