April 16, 2012

What was something that you saw in the media this break that made you think?

For my eighteenth birthday my parents sent me and my older sister to Winnipeg, because in Manitoba the legal age is 18. By legal age I mean the legal age that allows you to purchace . . . Prom Dresses. Yeah, prom dresses. So on the first morning in town (the night before I had a great night looking at prom dresses) I had a eye doctor appointment at 9AM. Needless to say I didnt make it and opted out for a 11:30 slot instead. With the sudden change in plan the doctor was not ready to see me right at 11:30 so my sister and I were left to read the gossip magzines that someone had left in the waiting room. I came across Inside magazine with the cover title reading "The Stars Without The Make Up" The cover was a collage of different actor (all female) caught in terrible photos. As I looked closer I noticed that it wasnt the make up (of lack there of) that made them look different, it was that they were in a bad pose, or maybe they were sick and the slim honesty that they were not wearing make up was realized later. I flipped through the pages and looked at who wore what dress the best, who had broken up and who had gotten together. By the way I had no idea that Aston Kutcher and Demi More had broken up. This is how often I read trash magazines. Anyways I get to the middle of the "celeb news" magazine and in the centre fold of it is a headline in all caps

THE HALL OF SHAME!

I gasped, all I saw were 50 headshots of random (girl) stars without make up. No longer airbrushed I didn't see a woman worth SHAMEfull accuzations. I saw women who were rushing to grab a coffee who only left the house with a clean face. The lame excuse for an article made it seem like not wearing make up was so horrible that one should not leave the protection of a paperbag unless your eyes were perfectly lined in black liner, or blush that made you look "healthy" instead of sick. I saw 50 beautiful women all condemned to people with 0 sex appeal to the public. Women who were striped of thier right to natural beauty.

I shifted my eyes around the small waiting room. I had rushed out of the hotel room to make my 2nd appointment. I didn't have time for make up. Was I now shameful? I looked at my sister. She was not wearing make up either but I knew that she was beautiful. I couldn't see shame in her perfectly shaped features. I threw the magazine back onto the little IKEA table that probably took 7 hours to put together.

I could not believe the message that the magazine had portrayed. I dared the editor to live her whole life only going outside with a "perfect" face. I use the word perfect loosly because to the theme of the article perfect meant flawless, my version of the work perfect was the face she was born with.