“You’re Worth It.” Translation: Buy Our Shampoo. If I don’t…does that conversely mean that I’m not worth it?? “Create a sexy, slimmer new you.” Really? A “new me?” What was wrong with the old one? I’m not sure I want a “new me”…she may have lousy taste in music. We all know in our heads that the models in magazines are airbrushed and that in real life nobody looks that perfect. Yet we keep trying.

Now there’s no problem with wanting to look nice, but we as a society put an extremely unbalanced emphasis on our superficial looks. This is no new news, but I believe it has and continues to get worse as companies get more greedy for our money and we keep buying their often semi-degrading slogans about our appearance along with their products. I live in Los Angeles, and maybe it’s slightly less bad in other places, but on my television there is an endless stream of weight loss and diet fads, anti-aging creams, alien-looking hair removal apparatuses, hair loss remedies, makeup, fashion and the endless list of stuff you can buy to make your body look better, which will therefore make you more attractive and therefore make you “feel better about yourself”.

The problem is, we can never feel quite good enough.

Someone is always going to come up with a new product and find a way to market it to you so that you believe you absolutely have to have it or your life will never be complete. How many dollars do we have to spend, in how many ways do we have to mutilate our bodies, and how low does our self-esteem have to get before we realize that beauty really is only skin deep? Consider this. Even the most beautiful girl in the world, with the most perfect body, has self-esteem issues—things about her body that she hates. There are so many more things we can put valuable time, money, and effort into other than trying to change the way we were made. Could the old adage be true…if we spend so much time working on the outside, what’s missing on the inside?

I’m not asking you to give up your favorite eye shadow, or dress in those old puff-paint spumoni sweatshirts from the 80s. But maybe it’s time to start changing the way we think in regards to our bodies. The next time you see that ad that makes you feel that in order to feel fulfilled, you just have to buy that product…guess what? You don’t.

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