What I really think...

The media is its own world, full of stereotypes, digitally altered images, gossip, exaggerated truths, and a great deal of sex. Although the media world is full of lies and fakeness, people get extremely caught up in it and tend to forget what is real. Many people are truly obsessed with celebrities and will go to any extreme in order to look just like a particular one. What a lot of people do not realize is, the huge process that these celebrities go through in order to look like they do...and it still is not enough. "The media enhances models' body parts and facial features with lighting, props, lots of makeup, and techniques like airbrushing. Blemishes, freckles, and other "imperfections" are erased to make images look as perfect is it can. This proves that no one is that perfect, not even models, otherwise their photos would not need to be touched up" (Flynn 1). In movies, magazines, advertisements, commercials; basically every image displayed in the media has been digitally altered, so one can simply assume it has been. The problem faced is not only with airbrushing and using photoshop, it is actually amazing that technology has come so far and it is possible to basically change a whole person with the click of a mouse; The real problem is that there is not enough knowledge among people of what is going on behind the scenes, not even a mere hint. It is absolutely necessary to let people know that their idols are not perfect, that they have undergone a full makeover on top of digital editing in order to acheive the final result that we see. Nowadays digital altering has gone to the ultimate extreme, even athletes and politicians are getting in on it! This manipulation of photos which are producing these fake images of people are getting out of control, even the President participates. In more serious cases, for instance if a celebrity has a child or has gained a massive amount of weight, they can hire a body double for a film or music clip. So if their body is not theirs and their faces have been defined, then who are these people? Young people really do not comprehend that the images they see of their favorite hockey player or singer has been totally manipulated. A survey determined that seventy percent of girls want to look like a character on TV. That is a huge percentage of girls that want to look like a fake person. Recently there has been controversy over the new cover of "Redbook," actress Faith Hill. She is over forty years old and appears flawless, no wrinkles and a petite frame. These are the images that make people insecure and depressed. When a woman has delivered children and has stress and simply ages, wrinkles appear and some weight can be gained, it is not natural to show portray these celebrities as superhuman when in reality they are just like the rest of us. If people truly care about the human race and want others to grow up to be healthy and nowhere near depression and eating disorders, then they need to make it a well-known fact that the media is manipulating photos and that it is not normal to look twenty when you are actually fourty-five. The media needs to stop encouraging people to set goals that are totally unacheivable, let the world know what is real, that celebrities, politicians, athletes, and everyone else in the media is a real person with flaws too.