The Perfect Image | Teen Ink

The Perfect Image

January 13, 2011
By nwatkins BRONZE, Aurora, Colorado
nwatkins BRONZE, Aurora, Colorado
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Beautiful. A word that should be associated with a kind heart, beautiful soul, and a favorable mind. Though instead you hear it and think skinny, perfect skin, great legs, and overall…stunning. Every woman in America would give you a different definition of what is beautiful, but I bet the majority of them would not say anything about what’s inside.

What is beautiful? What person gave beautiful a face and body to match? Well, obviously it wasn’t just one person it was many. It’s the companies who exploit women, the fashion industry, and the entire entertainment business. I’m not blaming society for excessive amounts of eating disorders, exploitive ads, or killing girl’s self-esteem. They’re merely just doing their job.

Companies like Barbie and Bratz are clothing the dolls in mini-skirts and short dresses. Barbie used to have their dolls in clothing that related more to the career world; flight attendant outfits and jockeys. Now they have clothes that are worn to clubs or parties. I feel like we are stripping away the innocence of young girls.

Also music videos, mostly rap videos, show women in tight dresses dancing in clubs. And the lyrics to songs are usually provocative and show that women are degraded because they’re a woman. Things like this give a negative message and promote girls to dress in inappropriate clothing.

There really is no excuse for what society puts in girls minds around the world.


I write this because I too have had comments made towards how I look or act. I’ve been told numerous times I was fat, and the sad part is every time I was told that I was at school. It’s not fair for girls to not want to go to school because of the mean comments and hurtful criticism their peers tell them.

I look in the mirror and pick out all my flaws instead of noticing all the good things.


Girls and women of all ages should not have to rely on being skinny to be viewed pretty.

The modeling industry creates hopes and dreams among every girl at some point. The dream that you could be in magazines or on TV or even just being famous. For the girls that had that very same dream find it is not ideal. They are told what to eat, when to eat, and overall what their body should look like. And for the most part they are crazy assumptions. Take Calvin Klein for example. He put out a picture of one of his models who had been digitally edited to make her waist an unreal size. What message does that put out? That to be any good you must look this way. Ridiculous.

Because of the pressure to be thin, girls and women all around the world face anorexia and bulimia just to fit in. Society is knocking down girls’ self confidence and self esteem little by little. At the rate they’re going what is going to be left in the next 5 years?

My hope is that girls everywhere realize that they too are beautiful, gorgeous! I want everyone to feel good about who they are whether or not you have the so called “perfect image”, because in reality it doesn’t exist.



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