Every day we are bombarded with advertisements on the TV, on the radio, at the store, and on our clothes. And what do all of these advertisements have in common? They tell us that with their product or service our lives will be better. A lot of these advertisements even tell us how we should look. They tell us that we are not good enough, we are too fat, we aren’t wearing enough makeup, our clothes are hideous, and we are far from perfect. How does this make us feel? Awful… guilty and depressed. Guilty because we are not doing anything to make ourselves look better and depressed because we do not look good, according to the social standards.
I experience this guilt every day of my life. Why? Because for some reason I have this notion in my head that I need to lose weight. Now why would I think that?
The social standards for the perfect body are based off of the models we see on T.V. and in magazines, but folks that is not the body size we should be striving for. Trying to reach that body size can be really dangerous and seriously unhealthy. Who knows what has been done to those models, they were probably Photoshopped, or they are poor girls who need to eat a cheeseburger once in a while.
Even though, I know all of that, I still feel like I should lose weight, and it sucks. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. Most women and men probably feel this way, and it isn’t fair. We feel this way because everywhere we look there is another advertisement telling us that we need to lose weight. All of those T.V. and radio commercials which tell us, “Hey we have an easy solution for you to lose weight. You know because you need to, and you would be stupid not to try.” Or how about all the magazines in the grocery store which are meant to enhance your lifestyle, and there solution is to lose weight.
These advertisements and products don’t want us to lose weight so we can be healthier, but so we can look good. How twisted has our society become that the most important thing to strive for is to lose weight so we can look good for other people? It is a cruel way of looking at the world. When we work so hard to get through school, get a career, raise a family, and provide for other people, and at the end of the day society says “I’m sorry, but that’s not enough. You still need to lose some weight because you don’t look good enough for us.”
But it is just not worth it to try and look good for people who don’t even care about you. Just look good for yourself and be satisfied with who you are. Screw society, screw the media. Just be you.
