Perfect

I have sadly run out of videos of cute kids, but here's some babies eating lemons. Trust me, it's cute. What I'd really like to talk about is this video. It shows a model before a photo shoot  once her makeup has been done, and after Photoshop has been used. The transformation is startling.

People just aren't perfect. Everyone has their flaws, even models. The last words to flash across the screen at the end of this video are incredibly true: "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted." The images we are shown of models in ads are not what these women really look like.

Buying whatever product an ad is trying to sell will not make you look like the flawless woman shown in the ad. Sometimes it's hard to look at these images and not automatically think that you want to look like that person. Images like these can have a serious negative impact on a person's body image.

A few days ago, I was working on an open-genre assignment for creative writing. It was a collage about body image and the media, made of images cut out of magazines. Looking through these magazines specifically to find things that i found problematic was really interesting to do. Usually when I'm looking through a magazine, I don't pay that much attention to the ads. This time, I saw countless ads that showed a woman with flawless skin; perfect, shiny hair; and perfect proportions. Equally bad were the ads that objectified women. This ad for Orbit gum was one that really stuck out to me.

There is just so much wrong with this. Is it really necessary to show a woman taking her clothes off to sell a pack of gum?

Ads don't portray reality. They show us what they want us to believe, which is a skewed version of what's actually true. I'd like to say that I'm not affected by these skewed portray of women, but that wouldn't be true. There's always something to strive to be, even if it's completely unachievable. I've been trying to look at images that I see in the media more objectively. I look for things that can't possibly be real. As I'm bombarded by images of flawless people, I try to hang onto the notion that it's a lie. Nobody is perfect.

I like superheroes

It's truly amazing how insightful kids can be. In this video, a little girl, Riley, talks about the negative aspects of marketing. She discusses the fact that girls are supposed to buy pink and princesses, and boys get the superheroes.

"Some girls like superheroes, some girls like princesses. Some boys like superheroes, some boys like princesses!" Riley exclaims, making a very good point. So many things in our daily lives are separated into "girl things" and "boy things." At a young age, our society tells kids what they should like.

For all of my birthdays through my preschool years, I was given Barbies and other dolls. I quickly grew bored of dressing them up and having them go to balls. Instead, I began to give them horrible haircuts and then using the mangled dolls to fight crime and achieve world peace.

I'm against the idea that pink is a girl color and blue is a boy color. "The companies who make these try to trick the girls into buying the pink stuff," Riley muses. I think this isn't just the fault of the companies who make toys, but also society as a whole. This brings me to another story.

I was at a little family reunion when I was around 10. One of my cousins, Karlei, had pink Crocs, and our 3-year-old second cousin Zachary decided to put them on. He really wanted Crocs and didn't care about the color, but his dad sure did, spending a good half hour making snide remarks about the fact that his son was wearing pink shoes. He told Zach that "pink is a girl color" and "boys don't wear pink."

This is exactly the wrong type of message to send to kids. Why is it wrong for a boy to wear pink? It's just a color. This video really inspired me. I think it's great that this girl understands something I've just begun to realize myself. Our society tells us a lot of things about what we can and cant do, but how important is it to be "normal?" I think it's better to be yourself and not let anyone else dictate how you live your life.