Just a couple weeks ago, we had talked about how men and women differ; men being masculine through toughness and women vicariously living through magazines and TV ads, trying to perfect their images to those unrealistic ones they see all around them.
While in Mexico this past week, these differences were so much more prominent to me. As all of us girls would sit along the beach or watch a show, how skinny or in what shape a girl was in was something we couldn't help talking about. We would look at our own selves and compare to those of the dancers in the shows or the other girls on the beach and yes, even to those in a magazine, always finding a way in which to "fix" ourselves. It's as if nobody was ever truly happy and content with every aspect of themselves. There is always something more we could do, one more work out we could get in, one less thing to eat, in order to perfect a certain image that we have been programmed to endure. And then there were the boys, how do they prove that they're tough? From what I saw in the past week, I think it's through the number of girls they can get with and the amount of drinks they can sustain. It's always a competition of who can get more and be more and do more.
Why is it that in our society we haven't been brought up to just be happy with how we are? We have instead been programmed to feel a certain way based on how we look and what we do? The media gets a kick out of all of this, and what do we do, we just eat it allllll up.
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Michelle-
ReplyDeleteWhat a great realization you've had! Before you get too caught up in asking why our society does it, try to focus on what you are going to do about that. We are constantly brainwashed to think about these things, so to counteract it - we need to spend time practicing being happy with ourselves, accepting ourselves, eliminating the constant comparison from our thinking. And this takes work and consistency because those other messages don't go away. Go to it! :-)