Alright ladies and gentlemen, while we might sit here and say that this change in beauty should happen, what exactly can we do about it? We've given you a petition and now we give you a campaign to join.
https://www.facebook.com/events/409395502438909/ Go to this site to join Miss Representation and Julia Bluhm's "Keep It Real" campaign to get one magazine to pledge to use one unaltered photo for a model. From here you can join the campaign and receive the toolkit to fight back!
Today your mission is to post on Seventeen magazine's Facebook wall asking them to use one unaltered photo of a model.
Tomorrow is blog day! I'm posting this today to get you started and tomorrow we want your opinions of why the image of beauty needs to change. I'll be posting my own thoughts :)
Send us your comments and Alysah and I will gladly post them on this blog. If you have your own blog, feel free to post there as well. Send your comments to our email PerfectBeautyIsALie@gmail.com.
On the 29th there will be an opportunity to post a picture for a fantastic prize, but I'll let the Facebook page tell you all about that.
Join the challenge, invite your friends and let's show the beauty world what we're made of!
Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Monday, June 11, 2012
Katie's Story
I'm sure that many of you out there feel that you struggle alone. That no one else knows how you feel, and they would never understand if you told them. You feel ashamed of what you do and yet you can't stop.
I'm here to tell you that you are not alone because everyone is affected by the images that the media portrays.
Take me, a 120 pound, five foot four, seventeen year old girl. At the age of 14 I had to undergo surgery in order to remove my appendix and after the surgery I weighed 110 pounds. This was due to a couple things: the stress from the surgery, the fact that I had vomited most of what was in my stomach beforehand and the fact that afterwards I'd been living on a steady diet of chicken broth and apple juice for about a week. After being checked out of the hospital I was sent home to relax and gain those pounds back. I grew more and more nervous as the pounds came back, even though I knew that meant I was healthy again. But I had somehow convinced myself that 120 pounds was too fat. I needed to be 110 again. That was my healthy weight. I was thinner then, closer to the idea of perfect, and as a perfectionist, I couldn't imagine why losing those ten pounds was unhealthy.
So what did I do? I obsessed over what I ate. I could only eat so large of a portion and only one helping. If I was still hungry afterwards, too bad, I had already finished eating. I constantly worried over gaining even the slightest amount of weight because all I saw was my 7th grade self. She was 125 pounds, the highest weight I've ever been, and in my eyes, she was exactly what I couldn't be. I'd think of how fat I felt then and worry that I would reach that weight again. I'd lost most of it through playing field hockey and it hadn't come back after two years. What would happen if I was 125 pounds? I thought that if I gained a little, it wouldn't stop. Two would turn into five, which would turn in ten, which would turn into twenty and I would never be able to lose it. I would be overweight, ugly, hopeless and a failure.
Even now at 17 I still limit what I eat and I can't handle any thought of gaining weight. I'm terrified of the famous "Freshman Fifteen" and what it will do to my mental image as I go off to college this summer. At 110 pounds I thought I was the picture of media perfection and at 120 pounds I'm always fighting myself to eat until I'm full rather than only eating tiny portions and stopping. And if I do eat until I'm full all I can think of are pounds on my body and how much weight I could gain from eating that much. I constantly wonder how I can exercise, not to stay fit but to lose weight that probably isn't even there. If I see myself as fat and needing to lose weight now, what will happen to me if I'm 135 pounds?
To everyone out there who believes they are alone, I'm here to tell you that you aren't. I am just now recovering from years of seeing what isn't there. I still wake up some mornings and think that I'm fat and need to lose weight. We can't allow people who are beautiful think that they are less because they are not a weight or size that is the supposed ideal of beauty. This ideal doesn't exist, the companies and the media are just playing on people's insecurities to sell a product. Take a stand with me and help tell the media companies that we refuse to be psychologically tortured into believing that we are nothing because we are not their ideal of perfect.
I'm here to tell you that you are not alone because everyone is affected by the images that the media portrays.
Take me, a 120 pound, five foot four, seventeen year old girl. At the age of 14 I had to undergo surgery in order to remove my appendix and after the surgery I weighed 110 pounds. This was due to a couple things: the stress from the surgery, the fact that I had vomited most of what was in my stomach beforehand and the fact that afterwards I'd been living on a steady diet of chicken broth and apple juice for about a week. After being checked out of the hospital I was sent home to relax and gain those pounds back. I grew more and more nervous as the pounds came back, even though I knew that meant I was healthy again. But I had somehow convinced myself that 120 pounds was too fat. I needed to be 110 again. That was my healthy weight. I was thinner then, closer to the idea of perfect, and as a perfectionist, I couldn't imagine why losing those ten pounds was unhealthy.
So what did I do? I obsessed over what I ate. I could only eat so large of a portion and only one helping. If I was still hungry afterwards, too bad, I had already finished eating. I constantly worried over gaining even the slightest amount of weight because all I saw was my 7th grade self. She was 125 pounds, the highest weight I've ever been, and in my eyes, she was exactly what I couldn't be. I'd think of how fat I felt then and worry that I would reach that weight again. I'd lost most of it through playing field hockey and it hadn't come back after two years. What would happen if I was 125 pounds? I thought that if I gained a little, it wouldn't stop. Two would turn into five, which would turn in ten, which would turn into twenty and I would never be able to lose it. I would be overweight, ugly, hopeless and a failure.
Even now at 17 I still limit what I eat and I can't handle any thought of gaining weight. I'm terrified of the famous "Freshman Fifteen" and what it will do to my mental image as I go off to college this summer. At 110 pounds I thought I was the picture of media perfection and at 120 pounds I'm always fighting myself to eat until I'm full rather than only eating tiny portions and stopping. And if I do eat until I'm full all I can think of are pounds on my body and how much weight I could gain from eating that much. I constantly wonder how I can exercise, not to stay fit but to lose weight that probably isn't even there. If I see myself as fat and needing to lose weight now, what will happen to me if I'm 135 pounds?
To everyone out there who believes they are alone, I'm here to tell you that you aren't. I am just now recovering from years of seeing what isn't there. I still wake up some mornings and think that I'm fat and need to lose weight. We can't allow people who are beautiful think that they are less because they are not a weight or size that is the supposed ideal of beauty. This ideal doesn't exist, the companies and the media are just playing on people's insecurities to sell a product. Take a stand with me and help tell the media companies that we refuse to be psychologically tortured into believing that we are nothing because we are not their ideal of perfect.
Sunday, June 10, 2012
The Camera's Eye on Beauty
The worst thing about the concept of beauty in modern day society is the fact that that is all it is. A concept. There is no concrete thing such as beauty, and it is a shame the amount of weight today's society puts on a person's appearance. After all, beauty is in the eye of the beholder is it not? Since when was the only eye that beheld beauty, the camera? What happened to the girls and women who wanted to become president? Those who wanted to be bigger, better and stronger than their brothers? At what point does a woman stop competing on an equal footing with her male peers, and get shucked into the "woman's path"? And why does that path seem only a fight for who can starve themselves the skinniest and alter their appearance the most with the most expensive makeup? Take pride in who you are and what you look like. Be all the woman you are, and if that woman weighs more than 150 odd pounds? So be it. If you aren't tanned like all the girls in the magazines (who use photoshop to do that by the way), then so be it.
Instead of trying to be attractive by looking like someone else, be attractive by looking like yourself, and make yourself someone worth being.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Change the world, one signature at a time.
Our petition begun on Change.org against using Photoshop to alter the images of men and women in fashion and beauty advertising. Sign and help spread the word!
http://www.change.org/petitions/maurice-d-hinchey-and-richard-l-hanna-stop-the-use-of-photoshop-in-fashion-and-beauty-advertising
http://www.change.org/petitions/maurice-d-hinchey-and-richard-l-hanna-stop-the-use-of-photoshop-in-fashion-and-beauty-advertising
Dear world,
Beauty isn't one size fits all. There is no standard model and there never will be. I am sad and disappointed that our society seems to try and beat into people that in order to be beautiful, they have to look a certain way. I say that our differences are what make us beautiful and should be celebrated. You aren't a size zero? Who cares? Size zeros don’t exist. Congratulations, you are a size nothing. You aren't as skinny as those models or movie stars? Who cares? They’re photoshopped. A perfect body is a healthy one not a skinny one. Even I had to deal with issues of not feeling skinny enough and I'm the thinnest person I know. I didn't have perfectly flat abs and a toned body so I thought I wasn't pretty. Well fashion advertising, you lost. Because I'm beautiful and so is every other person on this planet. If anyone feels they aren't pretty or skinny enough you message me and I will personally slap whoever made you feel that way because this needs to stop. Our idea of beauty is killing and destroying lives and I won't stand for it. Nobody should be forced to feel like they are less than who they are, simply because of an arbitrary number. All of this goes for boys as well. I know you guys feel pressured to look a certain way too and that also needs to stop. Perfect won't ever exist until we are allowed to believe that we are already perfect the way we are. Everyone is beautiful and perfect, don't ever forget that.
Sincerely, us because we’re fed up with this.
Beauty isn't one size fits all. There is no standard model and there never will be. I am sad and disappointed that our society seems to try and beat into people that in order to be beautiful, they have to look a certain way. I say that our differences are what make us beautiful and should be celebrated. You aren't a size zero? Who cares? Size zeros don’t exist. Congratulations, you are a size nothing. You aren't as skinny as those models or movie stars? Who cares? They’re photoshopped. A perfect body is a healthy one not a skinny one. Even I had to deal with issues of not feeling skinny enough and I'm the thinnest person I know. I didn't have perfectly flat abs and a toned body so I thought I wasn't pretty. Well fashion advertising, you lost. Because I'm beautiful and so is every other person on this planet. If anyone feels they aren't pretty or skinny enough you message me and I will personally slap whoever made you feel that way because this needs to stop. Our idea of beauty is killing and destroying lives and I won't stand for it. Nobody should be forced to feel like they are less than who they are, simply because of an arbitrary number. All of this goes for boys as well. I know you guys feel pressured to look a certain way too and that also needs to stop. Perfect won't ever exist until we are allowed to believe that we are already perfect the way we are. Everyone is beautiful and perfect, don't ever forget that.
Sincerely, us because we’re fed up with this.
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