Lindsay Kite
Lindsay Kite is one of the creators of Beauty Redefined, a non-profit organization created to help people recognize and reject harmful messages about beauty and health.
Lindsay Kite, and her twin sister Lexie Kite, created Beauty Redefined after undergraduate and graduate studies in the field of media influences on body image resonated with them and their own struggles with body image and self-objectification. They earned their bachelor’s degrees from Utah State University and their master’s and PhD degrees from the University of Utah. 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. Media literacy and changing perceptions of what makes a woman beautiful has become their life’s work.
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.
Lindsay notes that her adolescent idea that the only way to attain happiness, success, popularity, and love came from the media and not from any real-life experiences or messages from her family or church. Lindsay is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She says that the Church has a “focus on serving others, taking care of each other and loving God” that taught her there is “no room for competition and preoccupation with appearance.”[1]
A college media criticism class that she took during her freshman year opened her eyes to the ways the media sets the standards for what it means to be successful or worthwhile. It was a moment when she said to herself, “Yes, this has affected me, but I don’t have to be affected by it anymore.”[2]
Lindsay and Lexie travel throughout the United States presenting their message of true beauty and positive body image at universities, high schools, professional conferences, and church congregations. They teach through their website and social media. They work 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.
