Picture Perfect

Rebecca Smith, staff writer

“Take a glimpse in the mirror, just one more time. This time from the side. Maybe you’ll look a little thinner or prettier.”

It’s that little voice again in the back of the mind telling everyone what he or she should look like. The voice seems to stay there so long that reality becomes blurry. All they think of is one issue: never being equal to the precise image they have envisioned in their brain.

This ridiculous description sounds almost funny when it’s looked at from a different point of view. However, it is not seen at all as silly when such a tiny voice can make a gigantic impact on everything that person does.

It’s the image of the perfect body every female and even males look to for their own identity. How can anyone think of anything else when it’s all over the media? It’s only natural for all of Hollywood’s stars to look perfect; why not every person?

It is so amazing to think that our society is so obsessed with this issue that beauty presides over everything, including intelligence. Yet, even someone aware of this obstacle bases things on beauty instead of his or her significance.

So many have issues with the way they look that even a slight mention of anything regarding beauty is taken straight to heart. It is not feasible for someone living in today’s corrupt, socially uninviting, American society to think otherwise.

It is this issue that has people of leaping into an amazing amount of plastic surgery. People pay thousands of dollars just so they can look like “the perfect image”. Is it not an amazingly horrible catastrophe?

What ever or whoever set the limit to what is fat and what is thin? Today, everywhere the eye gazes is another advertisement with that tiny swimsuit model, who probably only eats a celery stick a day. It is fed to the public faster than they can eat it up, and it’s regarded as extremely important.

Thus, so many fall into the hands of anorexia and bulimia, as they see themselves as fat all the time. It is hard to regard this issue and not come to this point. They see this as just an opportunity to gain approval from such a demising world.

From those who fall into such a terrible disorder, some die and others become trapped  in such a strong state of mind that it can only be helped by severe rehabilitation.

Has our society become so obsessed with this image that now, as a result, people are dying? It is hard to face this reality, that self image has become so important that some will even die to achieve that fulfillment of true acceptance in a corrupt society.