A few decades ago the ideal body image was plus size and pale. Now it has changed to skinny and sun-kissed. No matter what period in time there has always been an ideal look. People would always go to extremes to be attractive. The ancient Olmecs from Mesoamerica considered a good looking person to have the “were” Jaguar look (cut-off upper lip so their teeth where always showing, and a head deformation). Today people starve themselves, use countless products on their hair and face, and spend tons of money just to have the coolest clothes.
The media can skew our image of our body image. Famous people will set new trends all the time, and the media will blow it up and post the trends everywhere for people to see and copy. Designers will copy stars clothes and images, for other people to wear. Or the Big name designers will always be striving to create the new hot trends.
People are out there trying to change things. Dove is running a self esteem workshop to help boost girls self esteem young and old. Dove is running commercials that show the process of a photo shoot. All the make-up that goes on the model, all the professionals that it takes to make the model pretty, and even then they have people take the image on the computer and use photo-shop to make it perfect by distorting their actual physical features.
Seventeen Magazine has a section in every issue that is devoted to body image and helping girls realize that their bodies are fine the way they are. They will have real guys write in and say what they really think about girl’s bodies. They don’t say what we think they want they usually prefer a softer more natural girl compared to bone skinny girl with her make-up caked on her face. The articles focus on the way you feel in your clothes or body rather than the way the celebrities look, or the size on the tag. It stresses focusing on the good parts of your body, eating healthy, healthy exercising and most important having fun and not stressing about the way you look. After all that is what it’s all about!
By: McKell O'Brien
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