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Dying to be Perfect

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By Devon White

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTlmho_RovY[/youtube]

Young people today live in a society where body image expectations are high and their physical appearance holds more importance than character and skill sets. The perfectionism pushed onto women from the media pressures them to live up to images that are impossible to attain outside of photoshopping and a 24/7 make-up team.

Jean Kilbourne, Ed.D. is internationally recognized for her pioneering work on the image of women in advertising and her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco advertising. In an effort to combat negative images and unrealistic stereotypes, Kilbourne’s “Killing Us Softly” video series helps to shine a much needed light on the impossibility of women and girls who strive to be like the models and celebrities that they see in advertising and the media. As noted on Kilbourne’s website, “The average American is exposed to over 3,000 advertisements a day and watches three years’ worth of television ads over the course of a lifetime.”  We need to challenge these negative comparisons by empowering both women and men to advocate a healthy body image by loving their bodies unconditionally. Kilbourne says, “Women learn from an early age that we must spend enormous amounts of time, energy, and above all, money striving to achieve this look and feeling ashamed and guilty when we fail. And failure is inevitable because the idea is based on absolute flawlessness.”

Projects like “Killing Us Softly” and BlogHer’s “Own Your Own Beauty” remind us that authentic beauty needs no software or a team of make-up professionals.