shouldilove

this is the intro and conclusion to a paper i wrote...


I remember my first teen magazine. I couldnt stop thinking about how much better of a person I would be after reading it. The front cover promised many things that would transform my life: how to get a guy, how to feel better about myself, how to know myself and get to know myself. And there were quizzes to tell me if I was treating my friends right. It was like a mini how-to-live manual with built in fool-proof tests to identify yourself with.
It wasnt long before I had subscriptions to Seventeen and YM, and I memorized every single page, including advertisements. It was always cool to bring them to school. The other girls and I would pour over them at lunch. I felt like I would have no idea what was going on in the world if I didnt have those magazines. They were my link to some kind of higher, more knowledgeable level of consciousness. The yearning to emulate whatever style was in that month was so strong.
When I did achieve whatever look or attitude I learned I felt a huge sense of accomplishment, but these times were few and far between. It seemed I could never make my eyebrows or make-up look exactly like it did in the pictures. The most intense feelings of failure surrounded my body parts that didnt look like the models-things I couldnt change, like the shape of my ankles, or the length of my neck. I never questioned why I wanted to look like the women in the pictures. I just knew that they were considered beautiful, and if I wanted to be considered beautiful, I had to look like them. I knew that a beautiful girl is a socially accepted girl, as the Handbook of Consumer Motivations written by Ernest Dichter, Ph.D., and I desperately wanted to be accepted (63).
It feels like it was decades before I stopped buying teen and women magazines, when really it was only a few years. I learned first hand what the effects of media and advertising have on a young womans self esteem, it was devastating. I hated my body, I hated my face, I hated my hair, and I hated the way my clothes fit. I was always worrying if my hair was messy, not like I had styled it. I woke up at five in the morning for years in order to have enough time to shower, do my hair and makeup, and pick out something to wear. My day was filled with glimpses in any reflective surface to check my appearance and make sure all was in order. Bathroom trips came every class period, because I was always so overly concerned with how I looked and needed to know that I looked (and therefore was) okay. Those standard by which I measured myself were never offered as an option to me. I believed in advertising and the media, I followed their step by step plan for life and held on to the hope of happiness, but I constantly found myself slamming against a non-existent door. I became very depressed on the inside, although no one could tell. I would cry hysterically if one part of my hair was out of place. My own feelings of self-loathing began eating me alive from the inside out. I was living in a world of hate, all of it directed towards me. I developed an over-eating disorder, because I felt I was too thin. I wore padded bras and thong underwear, (both of which I hate and am very uncomfortable in) because I thought that was what I had to do in order to be accepted by the general American public.
Fortunately, I snapped out of it. I couldnt take all the hate and pain and effort that was put into being something I wasnt. I started little, I challenged myself to not washing my hair everyday, not wearing makeup, putting on an outfit that was comfortable and not caring about how it looked. I wanted to know what I was so afraid of in the first place. What would happen to me if I rejected societal standards? It was only two years ago when I gave up looking for that dream out there, and started to honestly care about what was inside of me. I still like to wear makeup, but its my choice now when, where and why I wear it. Its no longer something I do because I cant go out of the house without my face done! I dont believe that my body, my hair, or my face are things that need to be styled, covered, or made up to be beautiful. I wear clothes that are comfortable to me, period. I no longer negociate my definition of beauty with those I see in advertisements. I cant even read womens magazines without getting very upset, thinking of all the girls out there who are looking at those pictures and comparing themselves to the models, feeling as insignificant as ever. I discovered that rejecting the standards set forth to me and finding my own inside myself was opening the door to happiness. And I didnt have to buy something to make me feel good anymore.