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,
the little girl shows to have a positive self-concept of what she can accomplish. Before the family decided to go on the trip, Olive’s dad asked her if she thought she was going to win. She replied that she did, so from that it was decided that they would go. Olive’s self-concept later began to change, and she started to question herself only after some comments that her family made about gaining weight and her ability to win. Something that is a huge influence on Olive’s self-concept is her family. When the Hoover family was having breakfast at the diner, Olive’s dad took the opportunity to tell her about how she shouldn’t eat ice cream, or else she would get fat. This made a big impact on the way she saw herself. Later in the movie, Olive overheard her brother talking about how he didn’t think that she should do the pageant, because she was not “a beauty queen”. Comments like those led Olive to look at herself in a harsher way, to the point that she asked her grandfather if she was pretty. At the beginning, Olive showed to be almost oblivious of the differences between her and the experienced pageant competitors, which she later noticed and became a bit self-conscious over.

Olive grew up with family members that have interesting personalities, but it is nevertheless what would be considered a somewhat traditional family.
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
body. Although Olive’s brother, Dwayne, has taken a vow of silence, he is still able to communicate through the use of a notepad. Early in the film, when Frank first arrives at the Hoover home, and as he attempts to make conversation with the teen, Dwayne reveals his displeased feelings he has towards his family by scribbling down “I hate everyone”. From what it seems, it looks like Dwayne had been feeling that way without actually saying it to his family, but he chooses to reveal it to Frank, which would be considered self-disclosure that moved from being hidden from others, to being known by Frank. Later on while Dwayne and Frank have a conversation on the pier, Dwayne shares that he wishes he could sleep until he finally turns 18. Coming from Dwayne who is a very reserved, those feelings are something that is not likely to be known by anyone else, except for Dwayne himself and now Frank because he shared it with him. When the family is getting close to arriving at the destination, Olive decided to test Dwayne to see if he is colorblind. Dwayne did not pass the test, and as he was explained by Frank that he would then not be able to become a pilot he naturally proceeded to have a full on meltdown where he nearly injured himself from beating his fist on the car. Even though at that point he still had not broken his vow of silence, his reaction and this news was a kind of feedback that was not known to anyone before he took the test. Also, as we saw the relationship between Dwayne and Frank become stronger, Frank says to Dwayne “You are not nearly as stupid as you look” when he figures out that Dwayne actually has a lot of interesting things to say, and he is not dumb like he thought he was at first. Him saying that compliment and sharing it with Dwayne as he figures it out himself is an example of feedback. The film Little Miss Sunshine shows all four factors that influence a person’s self-concept, which included Olive’s own evaluation of herself, the influence that her family and those around her had on her, the culture she lives in, and how she compares herself to others in her society. It also includes examples of self-disclosure related to thoughts and feelings the characters decided to reveal to others, as well as feedback like compliments and revelations that they were not aware of before.