Life is hard. Being students and employees and spouses take up our time and put us under strain. Health issues, financial struggles, social disagreements, and other unforeseen circumstances add unneeded stress to our lives. These responsibilities and unexpected situations are normal, and will inevitably occur to all of us. But our current media has added more turmoil to our lives for vain and narcissistic reasons. Each year, men and women are struggling more and more to live happily day to day in our society. Men and women are being given even more stress, anxiety and sorrow by the media and its portrayal of beauty.

Students go to school, employees to work, and spouses to their significant others with worry and anxiety that they are not beautiful or handsome or attractive. On top of regular worries and stress, the media has drilled into the minds of many that they are not equal to the whole’s vision of beauty. Along with their daily struggle to work and study and love their significant other, their minds are preoccupied with self-conscious thoughts. Our media is hurting its viewers with warped ideals and photoshopped idols. While trying to focus on building careers and educations and relationships, people are also struggling to build up their self-esteem after the media has crushed it.

People have so much to worry about already, yet the media decided that giving the nation impossible beauty standards to live up to was somehow acceptable. As a whole, we need to lift each other up. We need to have pride in hard work and love as much as we show support for “beauty”. In a society full of hate and turmoil, it is our job to spread love to each other as we lift up our peers.