When I was 13, I took a spring break trip to Washington, D.C. for a extracurricular program. While eating lunch with these two boys, I heard them talking about this movie called Little Miss Sunshine. I hadn’t seen the movie, and frankly my parents weren’t going to take me, a 12-year-old, to see any R-rated movies anytime soon (then again, I’m sure there were plenty of 12-year-olds watching R-rated movies at the school I went to.) But I decided to rent it from the library because I had always been curious about it. The late Alan Arkin, who plays one of the characters in Little Miss Sunshine, won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in the movie. Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect from the movie since I only saw the trailer a while ago, but it was really good. It also has Paul Dano in it, and Paul is one of my favorite actors. He plays a character in Little Miss Sunshine named Dwayne, who has jet-black hair and has taken a vow of silence until he is admitted into pilot school. He loves philosophy and reads works by a philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche. He also is very cynical in his outlook on life and hates being around his family (although he does love his little sister, Olive, who is played by Abigail Breslin). Olive is a spunky girl who wants to participate in a beauty pageant for Little Miss Sunshine. However, her dad is a super-ambitious guy with really high standards who can’t tolerate failure, so he tells her that they will only take her to the pageant if she is positive that she will win the pageant. Her dad, Richard (Greg Kinnear) is a motivational speaker trying to promote this class about becoming successful, yet the irony is that he is not successful in getting the class to sell well and he falls short of his expectations. His wife, Sheryl (Toni Collette), is just doing her best to keep the family together while also making sure that her brother, Frank (Steve Carrell) doesn’t try to commit suicide again after a serious attempt on his life. Frank is gay and a scholar of the French author Marcel Proust, and he attempted suicide because his ex-boyfriend fell in love with someone else who was also a scholar of Proust, and this left Frank feeling like shit. I kind of resonated with what Frank went through because I fell in love with someone who was in a relationship with someone else, and when this person got engaged, I felt my life had no meaning left, so I had to really rebuild my self-esteem after experiencing that painful heartbreak over not being with someone who I thought I really loved.
The family also lives with their foul-mouthed grandfather, Erwin (Alan Arkin), who got evicted from a retirement home after snorting heroin. When I was sitting with those two boys (one of them was named Seth and he was from New Mexico) and they were laughing about the grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine, at first, I had no idea what the fuck they were talking about, but then after watching the movie, I was like, “Ohhhh I can see why people really loved the grandfather’s part (and why Alan Arkin won an Oscar for his role).” The grandfather says what he wants and does what he wants and doesn’t care about the consequences. He encourages Olive to enter the pageant because he sees it’s something she really wants to do, and unlike Olive’s dad, he doesn’t care whether she wins or loses, he just wants her to try and have fun, so he prepares her for the pageant. He is pretty homophobic, though, and constantly makes digs at Frank’s sexuality. Edwin also loves reading pornographic magazines, and has Frank go into a convenience store to get pornographic magazines.
One key theme of the movie is failure and being true to oneself. Early on in the movie, there is a scene in which Olive and her family go to a diner on the way to the beauty pageant, and Olive orders ice cream and is super excited to have the ice cream. But her dad explains to her that ice cream will make her gain weight and that if she were a true winner, she would work on losing weight. I was pretty hurt when he made this comment about her, especially since she’s a young girl and is forming her self-image. But I love the part when Olive’s ice cream arrives, and Edwin, Frank and Dwayne joke that if Olive won’t eat the ice cream, they will, and as they start eating the ice cream, Edwin looks at Olive as if to say, Ignore your dad. Eat your ice cream. Finally, Olive can’t take it anymore, and she tells them to not eat all of it. She finally eats her ice cream with delight, and her dad looks disappointed and frustrated that Olive didn’t want to do as he said. I also really love the scene when Edwin (Olive’s grandfather) is helping Olive with her dance routine, and she admits to him that she is worried about winning the pageant and whether she is pretty enough. Edwin tells her to just focus on doing her best, and that the worst she can do is not try. I really like this message because from the limited knowledge I have about children’s beauty pageants, it seems like parents can put a lot of pressure on young girls to fit a certain weight and image. Little Miss Sunshine came out in 2006, waaaay before Instagram and TikTok were around, so I can’t imagine how Olive would feel about herself if she was on social media. I read this book a long time ago called The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, and in the book, he talks about the impacts of social media and excessive phone use on girls’ mental health and self-esteem. There is one part in the book where he shares a story about an 11-year-old girl who saw all her peers getting Instagram, and even though she was under the minimum age to sign up for an account, she did so anyway, and as she continued to use the site, Instagram’s algorithm bombarded her with all these images of thin women and misleading information about these unhealthy diets, and she began to feel really terrible about herself and her body. Haidt reprinted a drawing she did of her being on her phone and word bubbles with all these nasty things she said about herself and had people say to her encircling her. The girl in the picture is crying as she is absorbing all of these harmful messages that tell her she is ugly, fat, and worthless. I think that’s why I appreciate watching Little Miss Sunshine because the movie shows how, even though Olive struggled with her self-confidence after seeing the other girls perform at the pageant, she ended up doing her own thing and staying true to herself.
The talent show scene was the best part of the movie because there is a pivotal moment where Frank and Dwayne tell Sheryl that Olive shouldn’t go onstage to do her act because everyone will laugh at her, and they don’t want Olive to feel bad about herself. When he first arrives at the competition, Dwayne sees the young contestants walk by with their makeup and dresses and he and Frank have to leave to get some fresh air because they think that the pageant is fake and superficial. Sheryl, however, says that they need to let Olive be herself while on stage, especially because her grandfather, who died on the way to the pageant, would have wanted Olive to have fun and do her best rather than drop out at the last minute because she was worried about not winning. When she gets on stage, Olive dances to “Super Freak,” by Rick James, which unnerves the audience. Parents start to leave the auditorium, offended by Olive’s dance routine, which involves a lot of gyrating (I’m pretty sure her grandfather made up the routine) and the lady who runs the pageant tries to kick Olive off the stage, but then Olive’s dad joins her on stage, and then Dwayne, Frank and Sheryl join her in dancing, too. Most of the audience members leave because they are taken aback, but I found it kind of ironic that they found her performance too suggestive because for most of the pageant, these adults are having these little girls wear suggestive costumes and put on a lot of makeup so that they look older than they are. I honestly wonder if the girls who competed against Olive actually had healthy self-esteem, because it’s not easy to be yourself when it seems everyone else around you act more confident than they actually are. I know as a young girl I would often compare myself to my peers and it really took a hit to my self-worth. I think that’s why chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo (it’s a Buddhist mantra I chant every day) helped me when I was growing up because instead of comparing myself too much to my peers, I needed to build confidence from within myself. Even as a 30-year-old I still struggle with self-confidence, but I am getting better at recognizing when I struggle with self-doubt or imposter syndrome.
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