The War Between The Media and Self Perception

I know its been a while since one of us has posted, as explained by a previous post, but now since my exams are finished (yay), I thought I'd give you all some food for thought.

Generally, most of us don't realise what is going on. You see an advert that asks you if your body is beach body perfect and we just walk on by, pretending as if you aren't already staring down at our thighs, asking ourselves if we are beach body perfect.

We are constantly subjected to millions of subliminal messages that tell us that unless we are a size zero, thigh gap ready, sexually appealing teenage girl, then we should do anything we can, to change ourselves.

The continual objectification of women, takes a toll on us eventually, as there is a very small percentage of girls that can tell you that they believe themselves to be 'size zero, thigh gap ready and sexually appealing'.

So what happens to the rest of us?

What do we do, when we stand in front of the mirror, pinching lumps of our flesh, and questioning our existence, based on the pictures of all the 'millions' of beach body ready girls out there, sighing at our perceived incompetence, and wondering how much more we can do to change?

When we stand there and scrutinise every 'less-than-perfect' bump, lump and scab, do you know what we are doing in truth? We are doing what the media wants us to do, we are reconceptualising our own self worth and turning it into how stick thin we can make ourselves or how bikini ready we can be.

What these messages are really telling us, is that as long as you get there in the end, it doesn't matter how you do it. And that is the real danger.

5% of teenage girls in the UK are suffering with anorexia. This statistic only concerns those girls suffering with anorexia, there are other eating disorders as well.

The media portrayal of what it means to be perfect, as a way of objectifying and degrading the self worth and acceptance of beauty being in everyone, is changing the way that we perceive ourselves.

My favourite advert is the dove advert, because it openly promotes beauty in all sizes and races. It proudly tells young girls and boys that they should be happy with their bodies and love themselves for who they are, and not what the number on the scale says.

I think what I am trying to say, is that whilst we may roll our eyes at the picture perfect, blemish free and fat free pictures and posters of women that we see everywhere we go, we need to take a moment to realise that that isn't real life.

Real life is the ugly scar above your knee from when you fell your bike when you were seven. Real life is the freckle on your arm that you work so hard to cover up, and for what? Real life is that fat that clings to us for its dear life, in places that we don't want it to.

Real life is knowing that there are things that we might not life about ourselves, but accepting the people that we are anyway. Its knowing that what we are told we should look like, is not what we look like, and that's okay.

Its knowing that the media is poisoning us against ourselves, and the best way to beat the media is to stare the media right in the face and smile at it, like a big FUCK YOU when we are happy and healthy.

The best way to show the media that no matter how many times it tries to tell us that we should look a certain way, is to look the way that you want to look, to look the way that you are and be proud.

Its about being proud of who you are and what you look like, and knowing that no amount of pathetic, unrealistic photoshopped image is going to make you doubt who you are.

There are seven billion diverse and beautiful people on this planet, it would be criminal if we all end up fitting into the same plastic mould.

-LF, LR and MG

The Taylor Swift Phenomenon

When recently having a discussion with friends over today's positive female role models in the media, we struggled to come up with- well any. But as we stewed over this idea, becoming increasingly perplexed by the absence of positive female role models, one name seemed to pop into all of our minds, as we unanimously agreed that Taylor Swift ticks all of our criteria boxes.

We compiled a lengthy list of all the reasons for Taylor Swift being the perfect role model, it struck as as absurd how negatively she is portrayed in the media, considering all the beautiful things she has contributed to the music industry as well as for humanity in general. Swift continues to amaze the world musically as she produced her fifth album in October 2014, which sold 1.287 million copies in the first week, the fastest selling album ever!

But that aside, focusing on what she does for humanity, we were overwhelmed to discover that no only is Swift a strong headed, independent feminist, who constantly speaks out about the importance of fighting for equality for men and women, as well as the strength behind maintaining a support system of good, steady friends, but what Swift does best of all, is use her time, energy, fame and money to constantly look out for, support and care for her adoring fans.

Taylor Swift is a kind, caring twenty five year old, who takes time out her extremely busy life to send care packages to fans all over the world with hand written notes expressing a personal message to them. She sends money to fans who need, visits ill children in hospitals, taking time to speak and sing to them. She donates her money to charities such as NYC public schools and opened to Taylor Swift Education Centre. Swift invited 5x89 fans to secret hearings at her house of her latest release before it came out. As well as this, she personally sees that she keeps up with so many of her fans, constantly expressing her gratitude and support of them, going out of her way to do things like attend their bridal showers and send them concert tickets. All because she is genuine, caring individual who truly emulates the perfect role model, by promoting self worth, positive body images for both male and females as well as constantly leaving her fans in awe by showing her compassion and understanding for those who are being bullied, or suffering from illnesses both physical or mental.

But yet, what struck us as unjust, is that none of what we have described above, is ever spoken about in the media. Instead, the media chooses to focus on Swift's dating life, which by the way, is completely regular of a normal twenty five year old girl, and frankly even if dating six people was considered atrocious (which it obviously isn't) it really is no ones business as Swift should be allowed to maintain some privacy.

Why is it, that all we are told about Taylor Alison Swift is that she is a 'serial dater' and produces music that explicitly outlines her dating experiences but nothing more. Why are the same things not said about Rhianna or pretty much any other artist out there, male or female? Why is it, that for so long now, the media chooses to speculate about Swift, creating rumours that make no sense, zoning on in 'flaws' that they have created, such as being a talented musician and having a boyfriend, when these are things that every other person is more than welcome to? What is this 'Taylor Swift Phenomenon' that gives people incentive to ignore the obviously beautiful person that she is, and replace it with negative and unnecessary hate, that just seems to us, to be completely out of order and pathetic.

Surely, in a world where we are struggling to find good, innocent people- people that are in the public eye that provide us with a positive image of how we should be conducting ourselves, we would want to be pointing out that Taylor Swift is a role model. That the amount of benevolence that Swift exhibits is unbelievable and we should all only aspire to show the same levels of compassion that she does towards everyone.

So what we should take from this post, is that no matter how much the media tries to shove it down our throats, sometimes we need to open our eyes to the good people in this world. Taylor Swift is an amazing human being, and whilst her music is gold to our ears, whats more is that she manages to balance her talents with something even more important- with being a good person.

And whilst Swift would say that the 'haters are gonna hate, hate, hate' we think that it is definitely time for the haters to stop hating, because we have to speak out and speak now, in defence for a rarity in today's society- a positive role model in the public eye that is Taylor Alison Swift.

-LF, LR and MG