Beauty and the Media

Growing up I wanted to be like the celebrities in the cover of magazines. I would always look at their videos and pictures and think "Wow! I want to be like that someday." No matter how hard I tried, I would not look like the pictures in the covers. After watching a video in my 9th grade class on Photoshop, I realized that most pictures and videos are been fixed or made to look "better" by using photo shop. Some of the pictures were distorted to the point that the before picture looked like a totally different person than the after.

This is a vogue cover magazine of lady gaga.

Here is another picture of Harry Styles from One Direction.

This is a Madonna, picture photo shopped to make her look younger.

These pictures were altered to make the celebrities look skinnier:

 What is photo shop really saying? Why is it done? What does it tell the kids who are growing up looking at this? 

Adding Money To The Equation

I don't know about you guys but I am always getting distracted when I go on YouTube to look for one video and end up watching more than I should. I came across this video of Amber Rose and Wiz Khalifa, if you guys don't know they are currently married. Wiz Khalifa is a rapper and Amber Rose got famous after dating Kanye West's who is also a very famous rapper. In the Hot 97 interview she was asked if it bothered her that Wiz is high all the time and throughout their entire relationship. Amber said that she does not mind, in fact she said she does not even know what Wiz Khalifa's real personality is and she seems to be perfectly okay with it. I found this extremely crazy because shes married to someone who she does not know how he truly acts when he is sober because he is high all the time. He also added that the longest he has been without smoking is 9 hours and that was because he was in jail.

Amber and Wiz also have a baby together, Sebastian who is 11 months old. This means that Wiz has never been with his son while being sober. Again this is something that shocked me because hes high all of the time. The only time that he has been sober is when he signed his marriage papers and  when he proposed to Amber.

Imagine being in a relationship or married to someone who was never sober? Would you stay with this person? I guess you could say that it depends on the factors, like if you really cared about this person. Another thing that would probably affect this decision is if the person had money. Wiz Khalifa has made a name for himself in the rap industry and is in a position where he doesn't have to work an 8am to 5pm job.

This then raised the question of the things that money can do and how it shapes our perception. What if Wiz wasn't rich and famous? What if all he did was smoke all the time?What if he had no money? Do you think that Amber would look at Wiz differently? I do want to stress that I love Amber and Wiz and this is not a bash Amber and Wiz post its a lets look at things from a different perspective and question how we perceive things when you add money to the equation post.

We do this all the time it is human nature, Imagine meeting someone who you think is homeless for the first time. The way in which you view this person is probably with pity and you perception of them was probably not the best one. What if this person invited you out, and this person is okay for your liking but again he or she is homeless. What would you respond?  But what would happen if you then find out that that person is a billionaire? What would your answer be then? Money has an incredible impact over our perception of people. It has power to shape the way in which think and the way in which we act. Although its sad to say I feel like we have all done this once or twice in our lives. In today's society a person who has money is perceived as a person who has power, the more you have the more powerful you are.

                                        The Eyes of Others 

College is not all about books and grades. It is also about the experience and about learning new things about yourself. So far I have discovered a few things, like my passion for music, my interest in writing and many things about my personality that I did not know before. I also realized that the way in which people viewed me had always been extremely important to me. It was the reason why I dressed the way I did, the reason why I talked the way that I talked and the reason why I began to wear contacts. 

I wore them everyday and sometimes they would bother me to the point that my eyes would be red and irritated, but I refused to take them off because people thought they were actually my eyes. Or the fear of meeting someone new and not "looking nice". Till this day I still wear contacts occasionally, but thinking back it amazes me how how much trouble I went through to please the eyes of someone else while mine where in pain. 

This got me thinking about plastic surgery which is almost like my contact situation, people risk their lives to please the eyes of others. You may argue that some people do it for themselves, I don’t believe that’s possible and I’ll tell you why. If a person was to be given the option of getting plastic surgery that no one but themselves would be able to see, the flaw will remain evident to the rest of the world but themselves, would they still get it? 

More than likely they would choose the one everyone can see. This is why I don't think its possible for someone to get it only for themselves to feel better about themselves. A person would not pay thousands of dollars for a surgery that no one else but themselves would be able to see. Don’t get me wrong I am not against plastic surgery, by all means if a person feels the need to get one or many they can, I’m not here to judge anyone. But this left me wondering about the things we put ourselves through to please the eyes of others.  

Lets look at some celebrities that decided to get plastic surgery to cover up the "flaws" that they believed to have:

1996                                 2014

                                                                                                                                                                                                                 
Donatella Versace is the Vice President of the very exclusive Versace brand.




 

     1980                                                 2009               

                                                
                                                                           


Michael Jackson also known as the "King of Pop" was a famous songwriter, dancer and performer.

                                                      

   

"Lil Kim" is an American Rapper, singer-songwriter, and actress.                                                     

        1992                                       2014                                                                              

La Toya Jackson is an American singer-songwriter, and actress. 

                                       1970                        2014

All these people felt like they had a "flaw", to prevent the rest of the world from seeing this "flaw" they decided to surgically remove the "flaw" they thought they had with the risk of something going extremely wrong.  All of these before and after pictures made me think a lot about what we as society considers a "flaw" and what we consider to be beautiful. I then thought about where I am now and reflected on whether I still cared about how people viewed me, and I still care. I care less, a lot less but the truth is we will always care. Even if we say we don't it is human nature to care about what others think about them some people's opinion will matter more than others but we will always care about how we are perceived.