Beauty Redefined
Beauty Redefined is the non-profit organization created by Lindsay and Lexie Kite to help people recognize and reject harmful messages about beauty and health. Most of their work involves teaching, mentoring, and helping women and girls expand their ideas of their true womanhood and value. Media literacy and changing perceptions of what makes a woman beautiful have become their life’s work.
Identical twin sisters Lindsay and Lexie were raised in Idaho and earned their bachelor’s degrees from Utah State University. They co-authored their master’s theses and earned their master’s degrees in Communication from the University of Utah. They also obtained PhDs in 2013 from the University of Utah in the study of media and body image. Lindsay’s dissertation focused on physical health and the ways media distort our perceptions of what health and fitness entail, and ways to help people of all ages recognize and reject those harmful messages. Lexie’s dissertation focused on women and self-objectification.
They travel throughout the United States presenting their message of true beauty and positive body image to both raise awareness of the issue and to help people overcome the profit-driven media stereotypes that limit their ability to develop their full potential.
“Beauty Redefined is all about rethinking our ideas of ‘beautiful’ and ‘healthy’ that we’ve likely learned from the for-profit media that thrives off female insecurity.”[1] Their research indicates that the fashion, beauty, and diet industries divide and isolate women.
Lindsay Kite remembers becoming aware of one of her body’s flaws when she was in third grade. She identifies that awareness as the moment when her appearance started to creep to the forefront of her thoughts, and then monopolized her life throughout high school.
A college journalism class (called “Media Smarts”), taken during their freshman year, opened the Kite sisters’ eyes to the ways the media sets the standards for what it means to be successful or worthwhile. They recognized within themselves experiences of being stifled by their preoccupation with their appearances that was not a natural part of their true selves.
The Kite sisters say that being members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the “potential for fulfillment and unity among women” that exists within the Church strengthens their message. “With a focus on serving others, taking care of each other and loving God, there is no room for competition and preoccupation with appearance.”[2]
