The Mirror Never Lies

Busy or not, we all come across advertisements at one time or another.  After all, media is almost always around us everywhere, every time.  Once you take a flip to a page on a magazine or newspaper, switch the button on to turn on the television, or even take a glance or so at the billboard, there pops out right on your face, an advertisement telling you exactly what you need to do to be exactly what they suppose you wanted to be.  Or in some cases, what they seem to tell you should be.  They offer specific items of clothing, certain make up brands, a car model, a surgical treatment, or even a lifestyle.  They give us specific goals to achieve to be the best, or so they say.  Otherwise, would mean you are not good enough.  It is beauty, skin deep.

There has been one too many articles on losing weight to make you look better.  Every single day, we are bombarded with ads featuring skin thin models.  The only time these thin ones exit the front cover to give way to a curvaceous woman, is when the latter is clad in itsy bitsy bikinis.  We are offered the same old fast-food like menu on a daily basis.  There’s anti-aging products.  Medicines, supplements, and treatments that seem to bear a generic name, “fountain of youth.”

Ads would offer you the “way” to achieve the look of the celebrities you dig. They would lay down the steps to achieve a manner of dressing up to doing make-up so close to perfection.  These things are done so in the name of an aim to be beautiful.

Celebrities do look good.  We are not denying the truth to this statement.  But they don’t always do.  In the morning, they may be greeted by zits too.  Without make-up, they also experience the very same skin problems as we do.  Before going to bed, the zit remains.  Celebrities are just like us.  They are just mere mortals like you and me.  They all have their flaws too.

It just so happen, that it comes with their job to cover those up.  They need to look good always.  They owe that up to us, their audience.  In order to look good, they need help too.  That help is supposed to just enhance the beauty that is already there.  That is something we don’t get to realize.  Beauty is bestowed upon us all.  It is not something we buy over the counter.  Beauty is relative.  It is good in its own unique right.

We seem to have forgotten our individualities.  Individuals, we are, who wants to be no one else, but our own selves.  Media has done damage on our self-esteem and on the way we see ourselves.  Our views and opinions are shaped by the manner things are presented right before our very eyes.  We define beauty dictated by the way our society defines it.  The blessed few break out from the norm and are able to establish a definition of their own.  But a huge bulk thinks that there is a need to conform to what beauty is supposed to be as dictated by a certain product, look or what have you.  We tend to regard these things as a normal way of life for we are surrounded by it, always.

Media and advertising has made us more and more materialistic, exterior beauty-conscious, either over-weight or underweight individuals.  Anti-aging products almost imply that youth comes with a price.  We forget that we can never buy youth.  We cannot stay young for as long as we want.  We cannot battle nature’s natural course no matter how hard we try and how much we are willing to shell out.  In the world of media and advertising, where profits are drawn from our consumption, names are equivalent to sky high prices.

  Cosmetic surgery is beginning to be the solution to cure one’s insecurities.  We begin to develop certain eating disorders just to achieve the “ideal weight” that would make us fit in the “beautiful” elite group.  Vanity in its full blast won’t take us anywhere.  It will just empty our pockets and our self-confidence levels.  Looking beyond the exterior appearance, we must remember, is just a choice we come to develop.  We are not in any way, naturally inclined to do it.  Sadly, we are so much not in touch with reality anymore.

The media has been very powerful in creating the stereotypical beauty.  Many of us either consciously or unconsciously, are headed towards that same end.  They have influenced us to thinking that a certain look is what’s ideal.  No matter how unrealistic or attainable and unhealthy it may be.  They seem to set a certain standard that not abiding to which is some sort of a crime.  In our world today, media is considered to be the most powerful tool driving people’s mind to a perception of beauty.  As a medium, it borders the limits to being manipulative and misleading especially to the less educated majority.

Taking advantage in being a powerful educational medium, as it is today, it is set to target children and adolescents especially in the critical stages of development of the latter’s life.  They are the insecure adolescents who later become obsessed about they way they look.  Set to achieve “beauty” at all costs and by all means.  But the sad reality is that only a few achieve such goal.  But the damages are not just on them but also in those who have tried and failed.  They become the unwilling prey of the multi-billion dollar making industry of media and advertising.  In this note, not only mere mortals are affected by the power media has over the world.

Even toys like Barbie and GI Joe’s images have undergone alterations to conform to the ideals that have been set by this industry.  They do not anymore stay true to their names as average Jane and Joe.  They have now gone so far from being average.  The media uses catchy phrases accompanied by models of a certain unreachable image of perfection in order to highlight the importance of achieving the idea of beauty they sell.  They even go to the extent of almost glorifying it.  All their disguises do come in well thought of packages.  For what have they to lose?  They only gain as people spends long hours exposed to television, just one of the tools they use to convey their messages.

We seem to hold short lived physical perfection more important.  The importance of staying healthy for the long run is not anymore a priority.  Have we forgotten the age old saying that goes, “looks can be deceiving?”  Don’t we achieve a conclusion that the perfect picture we see is just a mere fabrication of the original thing?  It is not impossible and it just could be the truth.  Haven’t we heard of lighting techniques, retouching, filters and even Photoshop?

Come to think of it, are we foolish enough to think that such idea of perfection truly exists in reality?   The motivation we gain to achieve such goals only gives us feelings of frustration and disappointed on a dead end.  We have to realize that we are just moved by a desperate attempt to be who the media wants us to be.  Don’t we want to lead our own lives and lay down the road we whole – heartedly want to take not because someone else said so?  Instead of going toward dangerous extremes, let us just work on a better inner self at its best.

Think about this.  The wrinkles, the pores and blemishes and all the other skin imperfections are the authentic beauty we choose not to see.  It is the real thing.  It is the real score behind cosmetic solutions.  It doesn’t come with a price tag attached to it.  Don’t we realize that it is quite scary that the natural and normal process of aging is being treated as some sort of disease that needs to be cured?

Beauty has soared different heights imaginable.  It has also threaded different paths and highways.  Fakes are everywhere.  No one ever said that staying real is an easy feat.  But do we have to fake it in order to make it?  Do we need to cheat and lie to ourselves just to conform?  You may own the brightest bling, but the beauty or the lack of it will shine brighter than the your brightest bling.

A real friend won’t base your friendship with what’s in your closet.  If the one you have does so, then don’t even get rid off her on a sale, she deserves the road straight ahead down the junk.  People seem to be so into quick fixes.  And the club is not exclusive of age and gender.  We have to remember that the clothes would never ever make a person.  A new body will always hold the same heart beating inside.  And that is something that cosmetic surgery can never enhance.  No matter how advance technology is and will be.  We certainly won’t aim for self-esteem as low as the body fat we possess.

The advertising industry makes money from us their consumers.  Let us just give them our money, not our selves.  On their part, the media is there for the money.  On our part, let us not let them rule our lives.  They may claim they do such acts in order to sell just so to survive the very competitive industry they find themselves in.  So let us be wiser and be survivors ourselves in advocating that beauty is not just skin deep.  Media may claim to their right to freedom of expression.  So let us learn to exercise our right to make our own choices.  Let us learn from our experiences.  Let us not let our children be victims of conforming to these ideals like we did at some point in our lives.

But we have to lead by example, our selves is a good place to start.  The cost must not be as much as our selves, health and safety.  There is certainly nothing more of value than these three.  Our individuality must remain priceless and exclusively our own.  Does the saying “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” doesn’t ring true anymore?  Who own those eyes of beauty nowadays?  Do celebrities, magazines, cosmetic surgeons already claim ownership of those “eyes?”  The direction of such ads is toward us, the consumers.  We call the shots to either buy or not the idea of beauty that they sell.  True beauty lies deep within you and me.  Hope you have the eyes too see it.

Here is a reality check.  We have to learn how to love our defect because those are what make us who we are in all authenticity.  We have to make our own rules.  We need not conform to the standards dictated by any one else but ourselves.  We can blind all else with the hottest rock we can purchase, but they won’t stay blind forever.  We must still feel good about ourselves once the outer trappings have been removed.  We have to learn how to speak our minds without fear of not getting the nod of approval from others.  We can stage our lives so well, but reality will eventually show, before the curtain call.

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http://www.mediaawareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/women_and_girls/women_

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University at Albany. 2007. How the Media has a Negative Influence of the Women in

Today’s Society. Available at http://www.albany.edu/cs1461?Negmedia.html.

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Available at http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/questions/index?qid=20071024075733AAoHcSp.