The Fallacy

The realization of being lied to can cause pain.

The deception can result in hurt, disgust or even outrage and many times leads to distrust.

Lots of negativity around a singular act, but the end result doesn't have to be the distrust that often plays out. Take it a step further to the action after the reaction.

Action that can empower you, inspire others and reveal the truth despite the lies.

I remember a project I had for my consumer behavior class in college, not the project itself, just that we had one, and that when all was said and done...my perspective and life path had changed. Not as a result of completing the project, but quite honestly by chance, with a glimpse of a single image gracing the cover of a magazine portraying the fallacy we call 'beauty' in America.

Our professor had provided us with a number of old magazines to help us complete our assignment. Piles of magazines, from outdoorsy to fashion/beauty, knitting to woodwork, sports and beyond...a good, diverse selection. I gravitated to the sports and beauty magazines; beauty magazines, that as a preteen/teenager in junior high/high school, I would buy and peruse...and from which I would apply new found knowledge. And growing up, I never really thought I was influenced by these beauty magazines, to a degree detrimental to my self esteem. At no time did I feel I was a victim, or more accurately a target, of false advertising. I didn't have this misguided notion that if I wore the same makeup, clothes, hairstyles of these models, that I would look like them or have their lives. I didn't believe I would instantaneously have their figure, hair or flawless skin. I'm sure I had wished I looked as good, but you understand, as a teen girl in America, that we're all born of different sizes, body shapes, eye color, even eye shape. So you feel, you believe, as a young, naive American teen, that the perfection staring back at you from the cover is a perfection these women were born with and maintained, putting forth the effort to stay in shape, eat well and nourish their skin and body. Sadly, the reality of some girls is that they could work out and eat well, but struggle with being overweight. They could have a morning and evening beauty regimen but still have an acne-ridden face. The gist was this, some of us were born with the genes that got us on magazine covers and the rest of us got the genes that limited us to admiring the looks of those that were on the cover...and dare I say obsessively comparing ourselves to these marks of beauty in America.

At the time, I didn't believe this practice was harmful, comparing myself to other women, dissecting each body part, scrutinizing the differences, knowing I would never look like them, be perfectly proportioned like them; blemish free like them...as confident in my physical state as them. But it was a reality to accept as you integrate teenage dreams with real life obligations like homework, babysitting and track practice. Yet, at times, the shadow of imperfection loomed overhead subconsciously. And at other times, stark awareness also loomed.

The 'harmlessness' of this changed for me during the course of this college assignment. With one pull of an old 90's beauty magazine, a cover featuring a supermodel in a swimsuit, I noticed the model's arm looked attached to her body, just below the underarm. As though the skin of her arm was attached from her shoulder part way down to her elbow. I had to believe it was some lighting issue or an off vantage point but then it hit me, epic editing error. If not for a split second, where my gut felt something before my mind could process it, I would have dug into the pages of the magazine without another thought, but that split second gave me the change to truly connect with this uneasy feeling and intellectually process it...what a fallacy.

What were they hiding? Or what were they creating? Editing out arm flab? Brushing in tone arms? Evening out skin tone or masking scars? It could have been any number of things. The point is, they were covering something up or changing something entirely. Her perfection was a lie and I had been comparing myself to this lie my whole adolescent life, into young adulthood. In back of mind I knew people are paid to ensure these magazine covers illustrate beauty in all its perfection, that the people on the cover appear flawless. But I'm thinking wardrobe, lighting, backdrop...not the actual editing of the body itself, to appear perfect. And only at that moment did I have the thought that the women who grace these covers are imperfect. That's not to say they are not beautiful in their authentic form, but of course in our culture and time, that's not what we are sold. We don't sell imperfection. And we certainly don't market it as beautiful.

The truth is free, but not worth marketing and frankly unsellable, but we pay a great price to uncover the truth. A truth some may never accept or ever believe is good enough.

Sitting in class, I started to wonder to what degree this fallacy contributed to the forming of my own self image and that of my friends, in our most impressionable years. The years when we're discovering who we are, our direction in life, what matters to us and what truly is important in this world. Thankfully, we go through this analysis and thought process again at pivotal moments in our life...and again and again. Hopefully our identity is more secure in later contemplation, our confidence more stable. But after this initial revelation, I was now aware. And I began to understand that I had been a target...targeted for my insecurities. Insecurities about my looks, my body type, my personal style...and I was targeted, for the sake of money. Yes, this is America, capitalism and all...but why do we have to capitalize on one's insecurities to make money, to earn a living? It's not good business, is it? It certainly cannot be good business ethics...or maybe it's just plain unethical. Good business should not be about making money at any cost or at the detriment of another - whether the other is human, animal or planet. If only the mindset of 'do no harm' transcended all human activity, especially in business.

I continued to wonder, how many young girls with eating disorders started with one singular comparison of their bodies to these women, imperfect women, who appeared flawless on covers of beauty magazines? How many starved themselves, purged, worked out incessantly, sacrificed their health, destroyed their hair, damaged their skin, hampered the function of their organs, compromised their confidence and completely relied on unrealistic expectations of what beauty should be only to come to a grave realization, false as it is, that they would never be beautiful. These magazine covers, this fallacy of perfection and beauty, cause more damage than we know, before we know it and, many times, we only know it after the damage is done.

How many women have gone through their lives believing they're undesirable to love interests because they do no look like our idea of beautiful? How many self-deprecating, harmful thoughts have young girls and women repeatedly rained upon themselves? And in aggregate, how many years have we wasted on obsessing about our looks rather than developing our creativity, engaging our intellect, loving those that cross our paths and truly experiencing this one an only life...all because of the messaging crafted to feed upon our insecurities, for the sake of making money.

The fallacy has led me to this, a resolve of rejecting the products, the companies and the marketing that tell us we need to buy products that actually do not serve us, but harm us and other living things. Products that are tested on animals, products we are told we need to use in order to be beautiful, products that pollute our environment, poison our bodies, damage our minds and deaden our spirits.

This messaging comes at a high price. It costs us our well being, our self confidence, our health and our happiness. We lose our essence and sacrifice our trust. And devastatingly, we lose sight of truth.

The truth, my lovelies - free of charge - is this...

Our imperfections make us who we are. And who we are is perfect; who we are is beautiful.

Anything else is a fallacy.

#shamefree #bullyfree #bullying #confidence #eatingdisorder #advocacy