Social media is out there. Everywhere. It will attract you and it will trap you. There will be no means of escape. It has the ability to dictate what is appropriate. And for some reason, many of us cannot help but conform to these unwritten rules.
Today I will take a new angle on the issue of conformity. Instead of focusing on how ethnic culture impacts our decision to conform, I will look at how social culture seems to control us like puppets, making us bend our unique styles toward an ideal beauty that is sometimes too extravagant and unrealistic to obtain.
In one Huffington post article, Celebrity Fit: Hollywood Skinny and Sample Sizes, Leona Palmer writes about the challenges that our present day A-list actresses face. The happy, beautiful women we see gracing the covers of Lucky, Vogue, and Marie Claire are not all glitz and glamour. They had to work hard to get into those tiny, thousand dollar dresses.
Why don’t they just make a bigger size for these rich and famous celebs, you ask?
Palmer explains that most of these dresses are one-of-a-kind – the designer makes one dress and fits it to a runway model. So when celebs try to sport it for a magazine cover, often times, it just won’t fit. Dresses have to be tailored, seams ripped, panels of fabric added. All in all, the whole process is just embarrassing!
But it shouldn’t be.
Why should these celebrities, already known amongst the public for their beautiful faces and hot bodies, have to feel the need to fit into a Barbie doll sized dress? On top of everything going on in their busy lives, it seems unnecessary for those in the fashion industry to expect these actresses to be “fashion-model skinny”. I mean, is slimming down going to improve the public’s perception of their already perfect bodies?
And where does that leave us – the normal folk? If we expect celebrities to be even skinnier than they already are, does that mean society will also feel the stress of slimming down even further? Is this what is takes to be successful in the fashion and entertainment industries?
Granted, America, as a nation, is battling obesity, but eating disorders are still extremely prevalent. I’m not trying to say that all eating disorders stem from the desire to mimic Hollywood’s best and brightest stars. But social media has a way of impacting our society like no other. The newest fashion trends spread quickly and we always know the latest celebrity gossip whether we want to or not. We just so happen to live in a world that idolizes these people, and their image is constantly forced upon us so much so that sometimes it seems as if there is no way to escape the desire to conform to this image.
In a world that is gradually shifting toward sameness, I hope we find a way to escape.
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