Cohen: Magazines mask true beauty
The mainstream media says you're only important if you abide by their standards.
By Ben Cohen
Tuesday, March 11th, 2008
I spent a weekend in my hometown recently, and I came home to something curious that had been mailed to me. My mother told me I had received the famous Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue, which seemed odd. I had not ordered it, and frankly, had not realized it was out yet.
As it turns out, the issue comes as part of my subscription to Sports Illustrated, which is still delivered to my parents’ house, but the circumstance behind acquiring it really isn’t what matters. What matters is what it has made me consider since seeing the magazine in my mail.
Getting the issue reminded me of my early teenage years, when I had barely begun to discover those strange and wonderful beings known as “girls.” It was easy to assume at that age, looking at glorified bathing suit ads, that most women I would meet later on in life would be as apparently flawless, and as willing to wander around in bright green two-pieces, as the ones featured in SI’s annual Swimsuit Issue, or Maxim, or, for that matter, anything else in mainstream media.
My only hope was that most women would have names that were easier to pronounce than all the famous ones.
Apparently one of the guidelines for being beautiful is that the person’s last name must have at least three syllables, with at least one vowel that represents a sound it really shouldn’t. Of course, it became apparent to me after a while that this was not how they were. Not just the name thing, but I was quite thankful for that.
The mainstream media paint a picture of a world where you are only important if you are physically perfect by the standards that they have set.
Your skin must be clear. Your hair must be perfectly groomed in all conditions. Men have to be ripped, and women have to have certain proportions. Otherwise they are horribly flawed, and they must work hard to overcome those flaws. The fact of the matter is that normal people are rarely like that, and the world still spins in the right direction.
This isn’t to say that the people we are told are the standard for perfection are off in another world, by any means. They can come from anywhere, even the University of Kansas.
Look at the Women of KU calendar. It’s a standard swimsuit calendar, with gorgeous scenery, little clothing and women who will, in all likelihood, never go out with me, but it is comprised entirely of KU students.
Fun fact: I just found out that one of the models from this year’s calendar is a girl I went to middle school with.
There is not enough space in a column for this newspaper to go into all of the problems with being bombarded with images of supermodels as the norm for society. That young people are negatively affected by this idea seems to be more widely acknowledged.
Numerous eating disorders and self-esteem problems have been documented because of teenagers becoming desperate to live up to the supposed standards that their favorite television channels and magazines have set.
I am not here to offer a major solution to the problem. I can only offer some advice.
If you want to improve how you look, feel free. Work out, dress nicely, wear a little makeup if any of that suits you. Just don’t take it to an extreme. You don’t need to look you are ready to be pasted on a billboard.
Besides, your friends won’t appreciate having to learn the new, more difficult way to pronounce your name.
Cohen is a Topeka junior in English and political science.
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