I woke up this morning hungry as hell, so, as one does, I went downstairs to get myself a snack. “I’m out of food,” I said to myself. “Well...time to get groceries.”

I lazily crawled into a dirty pair of pants, combed my hair to look somewhat presentable and took off to Vons. I have become quite the expert at speed-shopping, so it didn’t need to take long, but apparently every person from the Inland Empire needed food as well, so the store was packed.

I did the only thing I could do: I picked the shortest line I could find and kept my head down, hoping nobody I knew was present and would bear witness to current cave-monster-esque state of being.

While waiting I spied the magazine rack, which was filled with the usual bullshit; today I believe it was “Prince William and Katherine Middleton crowned England’s new King and Queen.” Whenever I look at magazines, I like to play a game where I see how many magazines advertise: A. some picture of an over-sexualized person on the cover. B. 10 Sex tricks that will make him go crazy. Or, C. insane fat loss tricks to show off your abs.

Usually at least three of the magazines on display have two out of these three on the cover, so I tend to win this game quite often. However this isn’t a game I really enjoy playing, I actually find it quite sad that this is what it takes to sell a magazine. And this marketing technique doesn’t just extend to People and Star magazines.

Seriously, just look at almost any television show or movie, the lead character is almost always exceptionally attractive. Which I suppose is fine in itself. People are allowed to be attractive, in fact, I quite enjoy attractive people. But the media likes to impose this idea that if you are not tan, tall and muscular, you should be working towards it.

Now, I don’t claim to be an expert on the potential negative effects marketing has on the human psyche. But I can honestly say I have been personally affected. The majority of my teenage years I weighed less than 140 pounds, which meant I was pretty thin, especially considering I was six-foot-two.

This didn’t bother me at first, I was skinny all my life and I didn’t really see it as an unattractive quality. But as I moved into my senior year of high school, something changed: I started becoming more self-conscious about my appearance, I would get offended when people called me skinny, I would gorge myself on anything and everything just to gain weight.

Within six months, I went from weighing 138 pounds to 195 pounds. That may sound like a positive development, but I never felt any real satisfaction from it, I had a real problem with body image and was worried that I had gained too much weight. Soon I had become obsessed with my appearance, my diet revolved around eating healthy and I would stay away from any form of sugar in an attempt to look like the men on the magazine covers.

But I realized eventually that the standards set by the media are unrealistic and they aren’t what draw people towards each other, it’s just all part of a marketing technique.