Dear all of the media (both social and otherwise),
I am currently pacing around my room in a frantic tizz of an eruptive, emotional and distinctly female mess as I am suddenly stumped by a question that supposedly people have asked themselves for many years. Presumably, from the beginning of time itself, people have pondered this question and I’m hoping that you, Mr Media, can help me answer it.
Of course, pacing around my room in said frantic tizz is the most exercise I have done all year – as a give or take 160lb eighteen year old cannot possibly do more than sit on her rear eating junk food all day because of the direct correlation between weight, healthiness and ability to take care of oneself -. So it is no surprise that I have stumbled upon a completely mind-blowing and downright impossible to answer question whilst doing so.
Now, as a female blinded with many impossible questions and a hurricane of unpredictable thoughts, similar to those of other women’s on a daily basis: How should I do my make-up today? What is a contour? Why are we being paid less than men? – it is no wonder that it is only now that I have been hit with this question so fiercely as my schedule is so impossibly busy that my mind cannot possibly cover every topic in all the world. Having spent the last 18 years doing what I have been told, I’ve morphed into the perfect adult… all of which has now been destroyed. This is all thanks to you, media.
The question I am posing to you, the media in its entirety, today is: am I attractive? I know what you’re thinking. Of course you are! But this question is vain and vanity is so ugly. I am vain. So I’m ugly, RIGHT?! No that can’t be how it works. Kim K takes 50 selfies a day and she’s not ugly, is she? What’s the point in living if I’m not attractive?
So you can see why I’m in such a state. Anybody would think that being attractive or not is down to personal perception, but there’s just so many FACTS out there that I don’t know what to do. How can science be wrong? Scientists write for Cosmo. They have to! Otherwise how else would I trust the 24 best sex tips for 2015? I was never good at science at school… I guess my cells are just made like that. See, as a woman, I don’t know anything and I have to rely on articles from female orientated media formations to tell me the things I need to know in order to survive.
So that’s how and why a non-scientific 160lb eighteen year old female got to asking such a stressful question. The truth is, the mind wanders where it wanders. However, I found myself reading a particular magazine, (that I shall not give unwanted publicity to by naming), that acted pretty bummed out at a celebrity going on holiday without being “bikini body ready”. I myself can’t possibly be bikini body ready as I don’t own a bikini – but this very very interesting and definitely not clutching at straws solely to maintain female readership magazine pointed out the cellulite on said celebrity’s legs, which got me thinking: I have cellulite. Is that a bad thing?
No. I am wrong here. Cellulite cannot possibly be a bad thing. Just the other day I was flicking through a similar magazine when I came across a title yelling ‘LOVE YOUR BODY.’ But how can I do this if I have cellulite? The contradictions are rife, from: ‘having curves will make you a REAL woman’ to ‘how to lose 50lbs in 2 days’.
The only thing I could lose in 2 days would be my mind after being stuck on this question. This again makes me think that attractiveness is down to personal perception and that these horribly written articles should stop criticising different body types to increase their sales and perhaps appeal to the opposite market. If women felt empowered rather than demeaned then perhaps these magazines could increase their circulation in a positive way, rather than having to feed upon insecurity. Correct me if I’m wrong but maybe we need to celebrate different body types and stop dragging each other down.
But I am just a 160lb female with cellulite and I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Words by Zara Rowden