Beauty
...ge looking people everywhere. At my local corner store, the first magazine I grabbed was Elle and inside I found an article titled, “How to look like Jennifer Aniston.” The message I got from this article was that you shouldn’t be happy with yourself unless you look like celebrities such as Jennifer Aniston. If anyone is looking for any kind of comfort in their appearance, I suggest they don’t read fashion magazines. Television shows such as America’s Next Top Model aren’t any better. They portray woman, some extremely intelligent, as guinea pigs for new, stylish clothes and make them sometimes pose wearing nearly nothing. Seeing all these images everyday, made everyday people doubt themselves and their beauty. Even from a very young age the media attracts children’s attention towards toys and books that have been made to seem perfect. Many story books that children, especially little girls, read are about beautiful princesses living happily ever after. These lead to many young girls wanting to dress up like these beautiful princesses, wearing makeup and their mother’s clothes. These stories are a perfect example of encouraging people, in this case little kids, to become someone their not. A popular toy amongst young girls these days’ dolls called Bratz. These doll’s faces are covered in makeup and give off the wrong impression to young girls. They say that to be beautiful, you need lots of makeup. Even while I was visiting the website, the slogan “Please wait…It takes time to look this good!” Toys like this are harmful to young girls because they are making them worry about what they look like and comparing themselves to these dolls. Another example targeted towards older people that encourages a change in appearance, is the popular television show The Swan. It shows self-proclaimed “ugly ducklings” transformed through plastic surgery into “beautiful people” and then get the chance to enter a beauty pageant. Sadly enough, this show became the Number one makeover show on television in its first season and it continues to have an overwhelming amount of people write in wanting to completely change their appearance and get an “extreme makeover.” One of the reasons they want the change is because society tells us what is beautiful and these people aren’t seeing pictures of themselves in the media so they believe they need to change. We are taught that if we change to look like the people we see throughout the media, we will be happier. Even if this is the case people can then lose sense of who they are and what they believe in. The impossibly high beauty standards from the media make people to reach for impractical goals, forcing them to forget what’s important in life. R...