Persuasive Essay On Body Image

Nothing turns me on more than a picture of a girl whose head is wider than her waist. The most attractive part of this is the utterly unattainable nature of these web-designed women; they are click, click, clicked into perfection: blemishes removed, tummies tucked, features never before seen on a human person added to give the image a more appealing feel.

Photoshop and other photo editing softwares have changed the face (and bodily proportions) of media communications and marketing. The power to wipe away so-called “imperfections” of models has led to a culture that glorifies unrealistic standards and causes the consumers of Photoshopped images to compare themselves and their bodies to an ideal that is only reachable with strategic clicks and expert airbrushing.
Perhaps it is stubborn to believe that if females are to be inescapably objectified and commodified as they seem to unfailingly be, and if female bodies are to be shown in every possible venue in an attempt to sell goods and services, it would be just peachy if these women could look like, well, real women. Or, perchance, my reasons are not so complex; it could simply be that I have seen my nine year old sister sitting on the bathroom floor and crying about her body one too many times.

Photoshopped images surround consumers constantly. It is as ingrained into our collective psychology as is the urge to chase goals we know are impossible to achieve, as natural as the subsequent blow to mental and physical health that accompanies failed attempts in the form of eating disorders and depression.

But I can’t help thinking, as I pass a poster featuring a stretched-out-pushed-in-so-far-from-the-truth image of a model, and a little girl staring at it with confusion and self doubt coloring her non-airbrushed face, might we be better off if we valued the reality of human bodies as they are, rather than this tummy tucked, fabricated fiction that is click, click, clicked into our perception of the