A computer shaves the pounds off a model, and a young girl sees how much farther below the supposed standard she is. But it’s not really the standard. It’s just an image. An image that no real woman could successfully hide behind. At the grocery store this weekend I saw a rather disturbing cover of some woman’s fitness magazine. I think it was called Shape or Self or something like that. The cover featured the typical skinny model, but this one was adorned in what could only be her underwear. But it wasn’t simply that. You find that in every flyer in the Sunday paper. A bow tie has more fabric than this woman’s underwear. I suppose this grocery store eye candy did it’s job. The image still sticks with me, no matter how hard I try to forget it. What confuses me, is why would a woman’s fitness magazine put something like that on the cover? Doesn’t it simply perpetuate the unobtainable standard? Do women willfully accept this standard? As sick as it is, the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit issue makes sense, because men are simply lusting after the women and seeing them as mere objects. But a woman’s fitness magazine? Where’s the draw of putting skinny, almost naked women on the cover? Is this some kind of guilt persuasion?

Image is too important today. The clothes you wear, the shape of your body, the car you drive. When is it going to stop? When are we going to stop keeping up with the Jones and start being content with who we are and what we have?