Picture Perfect

Let me show you flaws, and I will show you the programs that can get rid of them.

From acne, to clear skin.

From aging woman, to eternal youth.

From size 14 to size 6.

I started my first article about, do women use too much make up and its escalating into my own little research project. It stemmed from cosmetics to (now) our healthy image of our bodies.

Here we teach our children to love and respect themselves.
Then we have girls like Heidi Montag-Pratt telling us that she was a victim to cruel peers.
Here we teach our children to be strong and stand for what we believe and who we are.
Then we have girls saying they are ugly, because they don't look like celebrities.
Here we have airbrushing and photo-shopping and now, we are facing major issue at hand.

Its being talked about more and more because now our idols are becoming victims to senseless photo manipulation. Some are outrageous and some are complacent and quiet. And women aren't the only ones subject to digital modification. Men and children too.

The reason I bring this up is because its bothering me more and more. The more we hide behind acceptable photo manipulation, the more it becomes out of hand. There was a point to removing blemishes from kids faces for school photos and now we are removing Demi Moore's hip. At what point did some idiot say that Demi's hips were too hippy? What message does that send to someone my age or younger!? Its bad to have hips??

My Thoughts:

So you can tell by my tone, I'm a little more fired up that usual. I have to digress from reviewing beauty products to bring this topic up. Not just because I want to stir up controversy, or make you question your morals and ethics. I want to talk about this so you know where I stand on the issue and what I believe.

I believe we are hypocrites. 

Like I said earlier, we tell our children to cherish and love their bodies, to nourish their minds with knowledge, to exercise, eat right and be responsible and respectful and yet, we aren't doing those things and we aren't teaching those lessons through and through.

When a girl like Heidi, who loves a media circus, says she was a victim to bullying or peer pressure and she has 11 procedures to help her self esteem. Who was she helping really? If a person like herself is considered a role model (seriously, people, she's a reality star not Mother Theresa) then we have the wrong kind of morals guiding our decision making.

I won't bash her entirely because she has the right to do what she will to herself, but what I do bash is the logic she had that she wasn't good enough the way she was born. I'm hardly religious but if I was, I would believe in God made me special. There is uniqueness in people, and yes, we have character flaws; we get blemishes and cellulite, thinning hair, what is so wrong with being human and who you are!? What is so wrong with loving the body that you have, respecting yourself for all the times you stood strong and being proud of your ethnicity and the way you were made?

We look at models in magazines and they are not real. There needs to put the equivalent of a cigarette cancer label on all ads and glossy magazine pages to remind all readers that:

What you are viewing is a marketing ploy. 

We use sexual/sensual messages to sell products. 

We sometimes don't even feature the product in the ad. 

We photo shop and air brush models, so they are not who they were before this ad.

We advise you to proceed with caution.

This warning label should extend to all forms of media that are sent to the public, whether its a billboard, magazine cover or an ad online. Because we have to tell people the gosh darn awful truth, no one is ever going to get to perfection. Perfection only exists in math and in the real world, perfection can be the cause of death. 

Eating disorders have destroyed lives of women because they think they aren't pretty enough, thin enough and you know what, when you have images like this:

 or this:

or even this:

We all begin to see the standard is too damn high.

Our quest for beauty should be about what is beautiful in life. Your daughter's first smile, your first kiss, your acceptance into grad school, your debts all paid off...but not these pictures of women.

We need don't need more information about the detrimental effects self image and what is the standard, we have those facts, what we need to be is pro-active. We need to reinforce positive self regard for ourselves. We need to be proud of what our bodies can do. We most importantly need to love ourselves.  

Love yourself like how much you love chocolate. 

Love yourself like how much you love to sleep in on the weekends. 

Love yourself like how much you truly deserve.

If you ever have a chance check out the documentary called America the Beautiful. And these links below.
The Unattainable Beauty and The NEW Heidi

-Christina