I Will Change My Outlook On myself


The media is a cruel place for any person, any race, any gender, and any age. The world’s stereotypical embodiment of ‘perfect’ as of late, is enough to disgust anyone who can see just how demanding it is. I fell into the fight to be ‘beautiful’ and still fight it. It’s not easy to look at a magazine, then again at yourself in the mirror and see something you’re not happy with. I’m positive I’m not the only one, and even more so, I’m sure that there needs to be a change.
It’s shocking just how many teens, even older people, and younger now too, can find their own selves ugly just because they don’t match the measurements written in ink on the page of a magazine. Women aren’t the only ones who suffer their inner fight to be perfect. You can look at statistics and see that not only women suffer from eating disorders and lack of confidence, but so do men and boys. Picture perfect body images affect everyone.
We all try to stop bullying. We say it’s bad, that it’s wrong and no one should be put through that. Yet the media bullies all of us. Imagine if the magazines at the store, on shelves and racks could speak. You’d hear things akin to peer pressure, the supermodel on the cover looking flawless, as she’s meant to, as we’re all meant to according to them, screaming at us to be prettier, to strive for nonexistent perfection. We allow these things to rule our lives, what we see on billboards, TV, magazines. It seems everywhere we look, someone is telling us to be perfect, and we’re being judged.
If perfect doesn’t exist, then what are we all striving for? When we skip that meal every second day, desperately hoping to keep off the pounds, or when we look at the numbers on the weight scale and grimace. Are we striving for satisfaction for ourselves? Or is it for someone else? We all can be happy with who we are. It just takes more than one person to make it successful. If people could be happy with the number on the scale, or the image in the mirror, maybe we could all be more civilized. Being a teenage girl, I’ve witnessed and been involved in how cruel we can be. The ways we put each other down to rise to the top, make ourselves feel better. How the need for perfection outweighs the need for companionship. What we really need is a change.
I want to make a change for myself in 2013, and try to get others to follow my example. At this point, it won’t be enough for me to be satisfied with my own self-image, but I need to help others feel the same way. In 2013, I want to be the change that I want to see in the people around me.