The topic of body image is something you hear about every day. Body image is huge, with many sub-topics.

Imagine you’re walking down the street, you see someone, what do you do? Almost automatically you would judge them, by their body shape, facial expression, or the clothes they’re wearing.

Why did you do that? What is it going to achieve? In the newspapers, in magazines, on the radio and television, you’re always hearing about celebrities, beauty products, and being fit.

Since you hear it so often, you’re phased by it, trying to fit into the mold, but why?
You pick up a magazine, like CosmoGirl, Seventeen, Teen People, opening to a random page, you’re most likely to find something that can “improve” you. You’ll find beauty products, advertising them by using gorgeous models, in airbrushed pictures, looking absolutely flawless. Your definition of beauty becomes changed because of constantly having companies trying to give you a make-over. No matter what the look, Smoke Eye, Fergie, Sassed Up, they’re giving it to you so that you can recreate it on yourself, giving the illusion that you could look just like the model.

Everybody tends to watch television, some more often than others, but often you do catch yourself watching. Teenagers and those adults with children in their teens tend to watch programs like Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, America’s Next Top Model, and when advertisers schedule their commercials to air, you’re constantly seeing them during these shows. Commercials like Proactiv, Covergirl, Aussie Mega, are commercials that you could almost repeat as if you’re the one suppose to say it in the first place since they’re on so often during television programs directed toward teenagers. They’re saying things like you can get clear skin, you can cover your pimples and zits. If you want “longer, stronger hair” they say to use their shampoo. Often companies use a before and after technique giving examples of how well their product works, and that you should obviously get it so you can be beautiful also. As long as you believe them and use their product, whether it works or not, you shouldn’t have to change yourself – to have the friends you want, or to be called the best looking girl/boy in school. There should be more advertisements to make us happy other ways, like by congratulating citizens on money raised, or about blood donor clinics and other types of things to help each other. If those were the type’s of commercials you see, then maybe you’d even realize that a smile really does go a long way, or a dollar donated to the homeless really does help.

There really isn’t any need to know from make-up artists’ what’s currently “hot” because the same style doesn’t work for everybody. Beauty is different on everyone, just as it is that everyone has a different definition of the word. Some people say beauty is having nice hair or a nice face, a nice smile or a good body shape. Others say it’s being yourself, that beauty is within you. With so many different views on what being beautiful is, how is it that a survey of twenty people, more than half came back stereotyping that to be pretty you should be 5'6" - 5'9" with blue eyes and brown hair. Even in magazines, pictures’ of models lately have dark hair and light eyes. Whether it’s a natural look or not, it’s what people are doing, it’s what we’re seeing from the make-up artists and it’s changing what we see as beauty.

What everybody needs to do is take a step back and look at what we’re doing. We’re allowing people that we have often never met, to tell us what to wear, and how to wear it. If we were to stop paying attention to it all and just do what we want as we please, we’d be better people making our own decisions. There’s no reason we should follow the lead and get stuck in the mold. As long as we don’t care what’s “in” and just do what actually looks good on us we’d be better off.

Just thinking about it, what’s the point of changing your look? How is it that almost all of the teenage society, finds themselves having to wear Hollister, or Abercrombie & Fitch to be one of the “popular” ones. If nobody reacted to the changes, would we find ourselves in a better place –- and who’s there to draw the line of when you’re following too much? The truth is, it’s up to you as an individual not to be phased by the latest styles, by what everyone else is doing. When we all do as we wish with our look and break out of the ugly mold of beauty, we’ll feel better about ourselves, it will come naturally and we’ll no longer be phased. There will always be people judging each other about something, but maybe it will just be saying “Look at her! She’s being herself, that’s really neat.”