Images. Open a magazine, turn on the TV, go on the Internet, and they are staring us right in the face. Everyday we look at pictures of women, and from them we determine what we want for ourselves. We want to be like Jennifer Lawrence not only for her beauty but for her quirkiness and her ability to be herself. We want to be like Beyoncé for her talent and her strength and her passion. However, the perfection we assume these women to be is not in who they actually are but rather in their image. The reality is that we are shown only a glamorized and highly processed conception of even the most “human” celebrity women. The women that we idolize are not actual women, but falsified perfected personas. If then, we are choosing to model ourselves after these images of women, are we devaluing ourselves to mere images as well?
Think about the connection that we have with our celebrity role models: we see more images of them than we hear them talk as their genuine human selves. What do we know about Jennifer Lawrence that actually came out of her mouth? Those few sentences in a highly processed and thought out interview? The few words captured on camera of her saying how hungry she is at an awards show? The truth is, those limited moments of “the real Jennifer” are not nearly enough to know who she is, much less decide that we want to be like her. Since we barely know anything about Jennifer the human, we are determining who she is by her image, or rather by her appearance. We are then deciding that we like someone and choosing to model ourselves after them mainly because we like how they compose themselves. Determining our role models based on how they look means that we are using that kind of judgment on ourselves and on others, ignoring what is actually real and important. Haven’t we already established that our minds, characters and personalities are far more significant and reflective of our true selves than our bodies? Idolizing these personas has retaught us the false idea that what we look like is more important than who we actually are. As we seek to emulate our idols for their flawless appearances, we have forgotten that it is ok to be human.
The pursuit of a perfect image is heightened by the Internet, where perception is everything. We worry about the state of our Facebook pages, our Instagram accounts and how many followers we have on Twitter. In a sense, our online presence portrays a composed identity like that of a celebrity, giving just enough detail to have people think exactly what we want them to think about us. We are proud to say that our various online accounts portray a sense of who we are, and while we may believe that it is a “true” representation, when was the last time you haven’t had angst over deciding on the perfect profile picture? Even in everyday life we seek to portray a certain look, by having the right clothes, hair, shoes, even body type. We have become so concerned with having an impeccable image like the celebrities we idolize that we have come to let it define us.
The pursuit of the perfect image is only setting us up for failure. Unlike celebrities, we don’t have professional photo-shoppers to edit all of our pictures, publicists to tell us exactly what to say or stylists to tell us exactly what to wear. As humans we are imperfect by nature. In the battle between our human selves and the image that we want to display, human will always win because human is what we are. No person should be devalued to a mere image because images are limited and often only two-dimensional, leaving little room for our true selves. Why would we ever only want people to see an incomplete view of who we are, and only see an incomplete view of who other people are? We have to become comfortable with being all of ourselves all of the time, because the truth is, even the images that we put out into the world aren’t perfect.
So instead of valuing that celebrity who is seemingly flawless, remember that under all of that imagery, she is in fact human, too. We need to choose to idolize women for being human, not for being perfect. Valuing real women with real faults, strengths, goals and personalities will cause us to value our own faults, strengths, goals and personalities. We are all human, and we have a lot more to offer than a limited and empty persona. Exposing all of yourself means owning all of yourself, and no image can ever give you that.