the standard of perfection: conclusion

         But why is it so important that the world is obsessed with beauty? Why do we even care about what we see in the mirror? Why is that? Because pop culture is jading what we consider beautiful (superficial if you ask me). Perhaps it's time to stop respecting people for their good looks and start admiring people for their talents or intelligence. All of the false conceptions of what a woman should look like is brainwashing females of the world into thinking that's what they should look like. The media is putting so much pressure on women to be perfect, when perfection doesn't even exist. It isn't fair that pop culture is setting such unrealistic standards for one's body. When these women fall short in the "ultimate" standard of beauty, they resort to eating disorders and have an extremely low self-esteem. Whatever the case, it is dangerous to force women to try to live up to an unrealistic standard. For now, let's let beauty be the cherry on top. Sure, it's important but the world shouldn't revolve around it. Besides, beauty is only screen deep. Or is it?

thinning celebrities

            In our society, the concept of being the most “perfect” and attractive woman is being wrongly represented by the media. More specifically, celebrities. This obsession with celebrity looks and their body shape greatly affects how women and young girls look at themselves. The false ideals of beauty created by celebrity culture are consumed and pressured onto young women. All of the celebrities, musicians, and actors we look up to and consider wealthy, successful, and powerful are all catering to the standards of what is considered beautiful. “Unfortunately a lot of our youth look up to these celebrities and emulate what they do, and celebrities feel that being thin is their currency…” according to filmmaker Darryl Roberts  Because our youth and young women idolize how celebrities look, believing that being thin is “in” is causing major self-esteem issues. The message celebrities are sending is that in order to be successful or respected you need to look like them. Is that even realistic? How can we ever expect to have females value themselves, have self esteem, and believe that they can follow their dreams if they’ll never look like them?  If women and young girls cannot attain this, they resort to having low self-confidence and self-worth.  Even Demi Lovato, a teen singer, had to be treated for her bulimia because she was being pressured to be thin being a celebrity. "One of the reasons why I became so outspoken when I decided to come out of treatment and talk about my issues was because when I grew up I was dealing with the pressures to be thin," Lovato said."It was the time in the tabloids when very, very skinny girls were on the cover of every magazine and that's what I was looking up to. That's what I had to idolize.  I don¹t want that for young girls to idolize." Lovato agrees with Roberts with the fact that youth look up to celebrities, and the  pressures to be thin is rising. Both Roberts and Lovato concur that because young women idolize celebrities, they have the need to be skinny as well. However, attaining this sense of beauty and skinniness is nearly impossible without severe consequences. Since young women of the world look up celebrities as what a body should look like, pop culture will continue sending them down a path of low self-esteem.

Demi after Rehab on the cover of Seventeen

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