LETTERS

The fabricated world we live in

Posted 12/19/19

To the Editor: How important is it to be attractive in our society? As humans, we are frequently told it does not matter how we look on the outside if we are not proud of who we are on the inside. We are told our kindness to others can make us the most

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LETTERS

The fabricated world we live in

Posted

To the Editor:

How important is it to be attractive in our society? As humans, we are frequently told it does not matter how we look on the outside if we are not proud of who we are on the inside.

We are told our kindness to others can make us the most beautiful person in the world, desired by anyone with whom we come into contact. This is an ideal we should believe, one that would make the world around us much less fabricated, much less suffocating.

We are forced to live in a world where sex and beauty sells, regardless of what the person looks like on the inside. Take this for an example: you are going online shopping, and you are hoping to find an outfit for an upcoming party you plan on attending. You begin browsing through the website and find a shirt you absolutely love. The shirt is being modeled by a thin, beautiful woman with a bright, white smile. You add it to your cart, and continue shopping for a new pair of pants. You find the perfect style pants in your favorite color and the store has one pair left in your size. You click on them, hoping to buy the last pair before they run out. You scroll through the images and see that they are being modeled by a thicker woman, slightly smiling with an unedited face. You begin to think twice about purchasing these pants, because you begin to lose the image of what you would look like wearing them.

This is common in the fashion industry, and the main reason companies are picky in choosing the individuals who model their products and designs on their websites, billboards, television advertisements, etc. We all want to be seen as desirable. When shopping for anything, we want to be looked at by others the same way we look at the individuals modeling the products. We see others who possess the image of beauty and imagine ourselves in the same way, leading us to make the purchase.

Advertisements for clothing, fragrances, jewelry, tobacco products, etc. are everywhere-and they always seem to contain that one element of sex that sparks the interest of the millions of people that see them on a daily basis. We are bombarded by unrealistic standards of beauty; ones that can never be met because they are not real.

The individuals in these advertisements have been Photoshopped, airbrushed, and edited to such an extent that it is difficult to see through to the real person underneath. We must ask ourselves: how can we compare? The answer is simple, yet attempts are continuing to be made. The advances in surgical technology and professional editing have made methods of comparison even more impossible, and will continue to do so as more advances are made.

We are losing sight of the bigger picture- no pun intended, and how this is negatively affecting our perception of what is real and what is fake. Will we ever truly be able to access our inner selves if we are unable to recognize who we are on the outside? I am hoping we soon realize what truly matters; our authenticity, our happiness, our values, and so much more before we waste our lives focusing on obtaining an image of beauty so altered it becomes almost impossible to go back to who we were.

As humans, we are so unique. Rather than destroying this originality to imitate a popular image, we should embrace our true beauty; what sets us apart from others and what makes us, us.

Jennifer Luker

Cranston

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