Who Says You're Beautiful?

What do you see when looking in the mirror? In today's world we can get bombarded with ideals of beauty that don't necessarily fit the individual. Still, the ideals are pervasive and made to apply to every person. So how do we break free? Sure, the simplest answer would likely lie with adjusting the sources of these proprietors of "beauty", but is it really fair to blame the media for what we essentially do to ourselves?

Well, that begs the question, is all this self-hate and body-hate really self-propagated hate?

It appears that it is. The logic behind this reasoning is as follows: No one is infected with a distaste for themselves just upon exposure to women or men who are more attractive, thinner, stronger, wealthier, smarter, etc. Feelings of insecurity that are buried within any individual most likely preceded exposure to these individuals placed on media pedestals, and will likely secede said exposure if no positive counter measures are enacted. So what is one to do? Shall the beautiful and handsome be removed from our sights? Well, that's wishful, and could do a good thing for some of our egos, but that doesn't seem to be what the public really wants. After all, the most attractive players in the media garner the most attention from the general public which tunes in to them, listen to them, gossips about them, purchase posters of them, ogle billboards of them, dreams of them, lusts after them, and, well, virtually worships them. Okay, so getting rid of their media presence is unlikely and considering the pervasive "star" worship would be largely unpopular.

A more reasonable and hopefully more successful plan would be a firm demanded for more consistent representation of all types of individuals: thin, average, heavy, curvy, and athletic. Extended that consistent representation to the large variety of ethnicities and the media would be challenged to fill the public's mind will all sorts of ideas of what is beautiful.