Women are on the constant struggle to fight the pressures of perfection. Through the media, the average day female is brought up to believe that there is a certain way she has to look and act to be socially acceptable.
Starting at a very young age, girls are shown images of the perfect women. In cartoons or the Disney movies, these images are slipped in to slowly infest the brains of the innocent. The thin figure with the curved hips and perfect-sized breasts has made children believe that that is how you are supposed to look.
Growing up as a teenager, the media’s effects on a girl’s mind has more chance to control her than any other age. When she is trying to find who she is and become that person, the models, actresses and playboy women are showing her that if she does not have that hair style or that shape of body, she does not fit in. Injecting in her brain a false image of reality and to purposely make her down her own body, media is the greatest poison.
That is why it is so important to get the word out to fight through those poisons and become independent. If you are always relying on what somebody else is telling you how to look or behave, then you are not being yourself. You are chasing the after effect of the beauty myth — the myth that you have to be perfect to be accepted.
Everywhere a young girl goes she can not get away from these perfect images. In newspapers, on Facebook, throughout the Internet and especially on television, it is impossible to ignore them. But if we can learn from the start to overpower these pressures and stick up for women’s rights, I know we can learn to ignore the media’s seduction of products of beauty, but it has to be a uphill battle.
Although it might have been a challenge, I have grown up being accepting of who I am and telling people to be so overwhelmingly excited that they are beautiful. It might sound cliche, but it so completely true. I have learned to love my imperfections and those things that I once hated. Even though sometimes I have given in to trying to fit in, I have created a thick wall to just walk around not pretending to be this “perfect girl.” I am not a barbie, and I will never be one.
I come to school seeing some girls dressed in the latest fashions and best hairstyles, but I ask myself: Is that really who they want to be? To spend hours to make themselves look perfect and wearing things that they may not even like, just to show off their bodies? It sounds extremely exhausting to me. And someday I want to just go up to them and ask them why they are trying so hard to be this person that they aren’t.
We need to create a day where a woman does not have to walk around being constantly judged on her body and her features. Then she can be herself and not worry about being ignored or shunned. When that day comes, women are free. And when that day comes, I can become completely happy and content with being a woman.
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