The Virtual Body Ideal. Why We Feel More Insecure Than Ever
The Dutch documentary Beperkt Houdbaar (Preservation Limited) throws a critical look upon our media era and how beauty in marketing is affecting the way we perceive ourselves. In the past 50 years or so, objectively speaking, women have become more beautiful. Better living conditions has reduced damage to their teeth and skin. Almost all women today look healthier than a few generations back did. Somehow, however, we do not see it this way. A shocking 2% of women find their own bodies sexy today, and about the same percentage said they were pleased with how they look. The ever-widening gap between how we want to look and what we actually see in the mirror seems to splitting us in half.
What is happening today
To find the cause of this discrepancy, the documentary maker interviewed some of the industries that reproduce different beauty ideals. A stunning conclusion was that nobody uses pure models anymore, all magazine and marketing firms add another element: Photoshop.
The power of Photoshop has given us the almost godlike power to subtract the ravages of time, loose skin, wrinkles, scars and pigment and add what life denied us, bigger breasts, eyes and lips. We want to make models look so beautiful that you immediately fall under their spell. These gorgeous ladies are literally from another world, and no matter how enlightened you are, they can not but catch your attention.
Do the images we see in movies and billboards not function in the same way? They do not exist really, they are virtual precisely because they do not exist, there is not a single women in the world today who actually looks like the images we see in magazines and television. But they do serve as attractors for commercial purposes. More and more women tend to increase their resemblance with them. Is it not so that women put on make-up to get closer to our intersubjective beauty Ideal? With a skewed sense of what is normal, when supernatural images enter our reality, we start to feel self-conscious and ashamed about who they are. The brushes of Photoshop have a far wider reach than the computer. Images are never just images.
What are the consequences…
Reality is being supplemented by virtual attractors and material reality gravitates towards these Ideals. Yet, since our current ideals of ours are unattainable, our idea of what we think should look like and how we humans actually are can never overlap. This causes an endless cycle of wanting to change. In other words, in comparison to the skewed norm, we can not accept how we are right now.
An often overlooked effect is how this social conditioning effects the way we treat each other. Once we start changing the way we look, we in effect become role models, who in turn influence others, and so on. Not only that, we also judge others who do not fit our shared, but skewed, norm. Peer pressure creates a ripple effect through society, making us partners of the advertising industry.
Whereas we used to compare our looks with real people around us, now we have to compete with images that are beyond the physical. And do not be fooled, this is a very lucrative business. Most women magazines never publish a critical piece about the cosmetic industry, nor do men magazines criticize the fitness enterprize. If they would, they would lose their advertising income. So, in effect, their whole consumer industry is based on the simple formula: creating a problem (your looks) while providing the solution (their products.)
There is thus a huge incentive to make you feel inadequate. Even when your body is fit and healthy, there is still money to be made if you believe something is wrong with you. And this is what they subconsciously tell you, day in, day out. We are not made to distinguish between real and virtual images, and so we can not help but believe what we are told. Hence the result, a culture saturated with self-loathing and psychological eating disorders.
What can we do to stop this…
1. Make sure you consciously stop comparing yourself with the virtual x-axis and y-axis. Compare yourself with actual reality, your friends, your family, and see that we are all perfect in our imperfectness.
2. Get rid of all influences that skew the norm. Throw away photoshopped magazines, do not look at commercials, look for the negation of life itself in the soulless masks. See how they structure reality and thereby break the magic spells. Also understand that subconsciously, you are powerless to their tricks. Want to feel more adequate? Do not give the cosmetic industry a chance to lure you in their endless cycle of not being able to live up to their beauty ideal.
3. Once you stopped comparing yourself, stop judging others as well. Stop functioning as a panopticon. Do not fight each other, fight the oppressive system.
4. Look into the mirror and say ‘I am beautiful‘. Why? Because you are a beautiful living and breathing organism, honed by millions of years of evolution, capable of a kaleidoscope of feelings and creativity, unhindered by the way you look. You are beautiful and it has to be said.
5. If you want to change something about yourself? My advice, do not do it. In 50 years time it will be seen as a cultural fluke, a temporary excess, an overflowing of material values. “How on earth did people believe that?”
6., True beauty lies underneath the mask, it is not the mask itself. There is nothing more beautiful than a healthy and happy person, radiating compassion and warmth. No amount of botox or mascara changes that. Make sure you are beautiful from the inside, because the documentary was right, external beauty is only limitedly preserved.
The Have I Got A Problem website is a free online resource to help people better understand any issues or concerns they may have about mental health or addiction. The website includes resources specifically focused to; general Mental Health, Depression, Stress, Anxiety, Insecurities, Self-harm Schizophrenia, Bipolar, Anger Management, Eating Disorders, Coping, general Addiction, Alcohol, Smoking, Gambling, Drugs, Cocaine, Heroin, Marijuana (Cannabis) Ecstasy, PCP, Mephedrone, Ketamine & Crystal Meth.
The site was created to give the public information to help them understand mental health and addiction issues and to assist people in making better informed decisions about their life and personal choices.
www.haveigotaproblem.com was created and is run by 'Advising Communities’, which is a UK registered charity (Charity No. 1061055)
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