Airbrushing

Is it any wonder that there is an increase in eating disorders and people's general discontent with their appearance when we are constantly bombarded with pictures of the beautiful people, shimmering in their glamorous clothes. Unfortunately this seeming world of perfection is just a charade, created by a media which values such shallow, superficial qualities. The ability to airbrush and alter pictures seems to have altered a whole area of the media. Countless gossip magazines push images of perfection and then juxtapose unedited pictures to deride those people who are no longer flavour of the month. It's no wonder that society's views are mirroring what these magazines push at us constantly, and people feel worthless compared to the images shown. How can an average person hope to compete with artificially created perfection? The picture below illustrates what is wrong with the whole media. The left image shows what was actually photographed, and the right one what was actually published in a magazine.

Now I actually prefer the picture on the left - she's attractive, and looks like a real woman - or most of the women I've ever seen, anyway.

Magazines demand the picture on the right though, perpetuating the myth that to be attractive you must be like that.

The world we live in seems to get ever more superficial, everything is judged on face value, when if you scratch beneath the surface of someone there is so much more to know and appreciate.