We live in a society that is obsessed with image. Magazines idolize women who are super skinny or as is recently popular plus sized. The message that is overwhelmingly published is that of being okay with your body and your size. However, the images are either one extreme or the other. My topic for today is getting rid of the image obsession that monopolizes magazine covers and web articles. How about we just show average everyday people doing what they do? No Photoshop or airbrushed magic. Let’s teach our society that they are beautiful just the way they are. That it is okay to be imperfectly you.

I understand that to sell products idealized tactics are used. I feel a better approach would be to advertise enhancing one’s own beauty with accents. Not using this product to make oneself beautiful. Why do we need to make a person feel mediocre to get them to buy something to make them spectacular? People are spectacular and can buy products to make them feel as spectacular as they are. Let’s teach people to accentuate what they already have. Not cover up who they were born to be.

Ancient cultures had the perfect idea of beauty. Perfection was not a necessity as many of their sculptures show. Both men and women had flaws. Both were an average weight with full stomachs. Not excessively over or underweight. Just normal. For example, the Roman sculpture of Julius Caesar shows a strong man with muscles but still a stomach.  His face is marred with wrinkles which are natural and thus make the sculpture magnificent. Today these same sculptures would be retouched to remove the wrinkles and make the muscle slender and toned.

This brings up another obsession of modern times, Photoshop. If you see a picture of a person on any media platform you have to question, is that really what they look like? Photographs used to be taken to capture memories in time. Now they are taken to enhance and change them so they can be the perfect image of who one has been taught to believe they should be. I think it is high time we did away with these image manipulations. Teach people that they are beautiful, and they won’t need to airbrush their wrinkles away. Teach them that size only matters if you are unhealthy, not in deciding whether you are beautiful or not.

I have a crazy theory that if we teach our children to eat right and to love themselves no matter what, we could get rid of all this self-hate and image obsession. Who knows, if we teach every child that they are beautiful no matter the shape of their body, the color of their skin, the amount of acne on their face, or any other outside influence, that they are beautiful and amazing for who they are, maybe just maybe they will listen. After all, they certainly listen when we tell them that it is okay to be themselves and show them pictures of anorexic models with airbrushed perfection. Gee, I wonder how our society ended up so obsessed with how they look. I think it is time this changed.

I challenge each of you to take this task to heart. Teach your children, loved ones, brothers, sisters, spouses, and anyone you know, that they are beautiful just the way they are. If we spread the love maybe it could become contagious and we could infect the world with good vibes and the love of oneself.

Until next time remember you are beautiful, you inspire me and I hope I can inspire you.