How the media damages women

I agree with this all the way!! Because of how the media portrays women having to be thin and have perfect bodies, this is why I don't read those gossip rags like People, Star, OK, etc. Seeing pictures of those famous actresses makes me feel insignificant, like no matter how much makeup I wear or weight I lose, I'll never be beautiful.

As a sort of experiment, 24 year old blogger Sarah Coffman wanted to motivate women and redefine how the media portrays women. Along with a few friends of hers and help from photographer Terence Smalls, each woman was given a Sharpie pen and told to draw on themselves, like a plastic surgeon would, highlighting what they would like to change about themselves.

1. "As women we try to fit inside of 'young enough,' 'thin enough,' 'pretty enough,' 'nice enough,' 'tough enough,' 'able enough,' without ever becoming 'too much,'" claims Coffman.

2. "If you want to be socially acceptable you need to keep yourself inside the lines"

3. "If you look at the cover of any woman’s magazine there’s three main themes: what can you do for men, learn to love yourself, and how to lose 30 pounds in some ridiculously unhealthy amount of time"

4. "How can anyone be okay with these articles? Why do we have to care SO much about what HE thinks?"

5. "Every woman out there has those lines of insecurity, and they continue to grow because we allow them to"

6. "In a few of the photos you can see that the women are actually pointing out each other's 'shortcomings.' That may be a bigger problem than the media"

7. "Part of the reason that media has such a huge impact is because we let it"

8. "Often times you’ll hear women call each other fat or sticks or slutty"

9. "..which not only gives men the permission to treat us the same way we treat each other but it gives permission to the media to treat us that way too"

10. "We are so much more than the bodies we live in..."

11. "That's what true beauty is. Not afraid to be and show yourself for who you really are"

12. "Internalized misogyny is such a huge problem"

13. "There's a trend, it's been a trend for decades, to cram women into a certain ideal that for most people is simply unattainable. That's not fair to young girls"

14. "We live in a society where women are constantly being stripped down and evaluated, without physically being stripped down," Smalls said on his website"

15. Smalls adds: "What does it look like when we actually strip women down and evaluate their physical "shortcomings?"  How insane does it look? How uncomfortable does it make us feel?"

16. Be your true beautiful self

17. Beauty is everywhere