Does a Pretty Face Make it Better?

Melanie Martinez has a song that speaks to todays female youth called "Ms Potato Head". It is about how girls are learning that in order to be beautiful, they need all of these surgeries and brands and hairstyles and how dumb it is that we are sending that message to girls. One of the lyrics go:

Don't be dramatic, it's only some plastic
No one will love you if you're unattractive
This line is showing us the darkness that society makes us feel. We see famous people all over getting their face redone, liposuctions, lip injections, crazy things that make us "beautiful"
All for what? More Instagram likes? More attention? What does that even give you? People aren't liking a picture of you, it is not your body anymore. Not only does these surgeries change your appearance, but they change your personality. You will either walk out of that more confident, less confident, or some other emotion, but you have artificially changed yourself.
Another lyric goes:
Oh, Mrs. Potato Head tell me, is sit true that pain is beauty?
Does a new face come with a warranty?
Will a pretty face make it better?
The last line goes deep. Because, is it true? What is a pretty face going to do that will make your life better? We, as people, have gotten so wrapped up in what it means to be beautiful and that's all we care about. What makes looks so special? We need to pay attention to the beauty on the inside. It is disgusting to see what people will go through in order to feel like they belong somewhere. What have we done to todays society?

It shouldn't require a pretty face to be beautiful, and that is what most people say, but we still aren't willing to change that.

In the Background

I am sure most people have seen this commercial; it became pretty popular a couple weeks ago, but I would like to bring attention to it again. Its a commercial about a boy named Evan and how he began this relationship with the person writing him on the desk in the library. During the entire commercial we watch Evan and how he is. Then at the end of the commercial, Evan finally meets the girl that he was writing with, but while they are talking, you see a figure in the background open the gym door and pull out a gun. Then, the entire commercial plays over again, except showing us what's happening behind Evan, and we see a boy his age who is depressed and is planning to shoot the school.
The commercial is bringing attention to us that we need to be aware of the signs of a school shooter, and even depressed kids in general. In high school it gets hard. You begin to see some people that you know slip into bad things, you may even begin to as well. It's just a big emotional time for most students this age.
We need to be aware of the pain people are going through and do our best not to make it worse and even try to prevent it. You cannot just go making fun of people and then making up the excuse that it is "just a joke", because you can still really hurt someone.
We, as teenagers, don't really care about anyone but ourselves; it isn't even just teenagers, it is people in general. We are born selfish, we want what we want. That doesn't mean that we have to go out of our way to make someone's life hell. We should be going out of our way to reach out to people to see if you can help and sometimes it's hard, but we should still try.
We should all be more aware of the people around us, because sometimes, the biggest smile can be hiding someone who's in horrible pain.

But I want to Dream, So leave me to Dream

Recently I pulled out one of my vinyls, Smoke and Mirrors by Imagine Dragons. (weird name for a band, but I love the music) I decided to listen to it and there is a song called Dream on it. While listening to the album, I was just listening for the music, not really for the lyrics, but then that song came on.

It stood out to me because the all the other songs I was listening seemed more upbeat compared to this song. This song had a darker vibe to it. The song is about how we all are living in a fake world and how everything seems okay but it really isn't, which is kind of true.
We have been sheltered from the tragedy of the world behind the walls of our home. We mostly just choose to shut out anything that doesn't feel right versus trying to fix it, because we do not want to get ourselves involved in a mess that isn't our own. But if we don't get involved and help others, eventually things will come around and we will be the one in trouble and we will see that no one wants to help.
There is a line that goes:
oh the prettiest of lights that hang the hallways of the home
and the cries from the strangers out at night
they don't keep us up at night
we have the curtains drawn and closed
This shows how we focus on the little pretty things in our own lives versus the misery of others that our outside of our own. We choose to ignore and not think about the pain that others are going through and we are just blinding ourselves with a false hope that everything is okay.
There is a reason the radio doesn't play songs like this, they don't want people feeling sad and changing the radio, everyone wants to remain happy. But how can you know what happiness is without experiencing sadness?(little bit of brave new world for you)
This song made me feel like I need to try not to ignore what is wrong, but to try to help, at least acknowledge the situations in others lives. We all need to try to understand the pain of others because covering it up with happiness will only make it worse, don't you think?
But as the song states:
and all the sorrow I have seen
it leaves me to believe
that everything's a mess

but I want to dream, so leave me to dream

The Persuaders

Recently in class we have all watched The Persuaders, a documentary about the power house companies and how they make their advertising stand out to the people who should purchase their products. Our generation was born right in the middle of this advertising craze, we have grown up while always being surrounded by advertisements. Having being cluttered with all of these advertisements, we don't really have a strong reaction to them all that much, because they are just advertisements and there is nothing much else to it. Persuaders, though, argue otherwise; they claim there is almost an art to advertisement. Persuaders are trying to create a new world, meaning, and identity for the consumers, so they claim. But how? I kept this in my mind the entire time watching this documentary. 

The Persuaders have now been able to stop with so much broadcasting and are now able to also narrowcast; we see it all the time. We will have ads alongside a website of clothing brands and shoes we like. The Persuaders have now learned everything about us, pretty creepy.  The Persuaders say that their advertisements are "helping us find meaning" and "filling holes that weren't filled before". They kept on saying these positive things and how advertising is opening up our minds, but they still didn't explain HOW these advertisements were opening our eyes.
These Persuaders want to give us the impression that they are filling our needs, but they don't actually want to fill the needs, they want us to think that a product will help us, so that we keep buying it to keep us happy. They have people stuck in this circle of misleading lies just so they can get money. Yes, it is true that some products do completely satisfy our needs, but most do not. So what's the point of them? It's not to help us, it's to help the big name brands get even bigger.
After watching this documentary on how these peoples' mindsets work, it makes me feel stupid for falling for their tricks. Really? Your commercial is going to make me feel connected to you emotionally? Is your product really going to give me a new world, meaning, and identity just because you say it will?
I think we all get way to wrapped up in what is popular and what will make us better that we begun to not gain identity from these advertisements, but lose it.
We all become this group of people who all shop for the same thing and wear the same clothes, have the same world that these Persuaders have shown us.
Where is the identity in that?
These people are not making us be our own self, they are turning us into one, big money-spending race that doesn't know an better.

We need to take a step back and realize,

it is just an advertisement and that is all it will ever be.

Words that Control YOU.

This was a commercial came out a while ago, but it is just a small view of how someone can take an original story and twist and turn it however they want.

Left: "We wish you a scary Halloween!"-Pepsi; Right: "Everybody

wants to be a hero"-Coca Cola

The Pepsi brand made a commercial to make fun of Coca Cola, so Coca Cola went ahead and took advantage of the picture and made it to support their own brand whilst still making fun of Pepsi.

I know this commercial was not to make people aware of how people can change stories completely, but that's what it is showing if you look deeply enough.

If this technique is being used in something as simple as a soda brand commercial, then how could it not be happening everywhere else in social media? It is sad and confusing to not have just the straight up story.

This technique was used all throughout the presidential election, which just really sucks for us Americans. Personally, I don't want the story to be morphed so that it appeals to me or to other crowds, I want it to just be the bland, boring truth.

I am sick of word play.

With all of this media and advertising around us, it is hard to tell what it right and what is wrong anymore, because we aren't just surrounded with ONE type of same flavored soda, or ONE type of presidential email scandal, but we have words that make one better then the other. An email scam on one site is an email problem to another. Words have become so powerful in media to the point where they make one thing into two or more different stories, just so they can please different crowds.

We need to look beyond the power of words that appeal to us and just try to understand the story for what it is, not for what we want it to be. 

Lack of Amenity Towards Our Identity

Media is all around us; our generation was born and raised off of it. We haven't exactly had a day without it.
A friend once told me that the season we are so attached to our phones is because we were born and we grew up with it always at our hands. They compared it to how a child goes to their teddy bear for comfort, but eventually they need to grow up and not depend on it anymore. Metaphorically, our phones, TVs, and tablets are this teddy bear, and since we have not been separated from it from when we were little, we constantly feel the need to have it at our side or in our pockets.
After hearing this, it made me realize how truly attached I am and how others are to their devices, and it is true that it is a way to find comfort. Besides the fact that electronics are fun and what not, they have given the 21st century a way to escape from reality without moving. I personally do go to my phone to sometimes just clock out of the world for a bit and focus on things I like or would want for myself. But when is enough enough?
We have become so wrapped up in social media that we have began to loose our own identity and we all become some weird human race that all like the same thing. Don't get me wrong, there are some that really just don't care about what people think and just be themselves, but most, some even without being aware of it, try to do what makes them fit in, even if that means that you have to hide some of your favorite things so that you will not be judged by others for it. Social Media is beginning to loose its encouragement for individuality and is beginning to just shape us all into the mold that it wants us to be.
I do love Social Media though. I know that it isn't necessarily benefitting me in anyway, but I still like it. Why though? I do not really know. Maybe because of the whole teddy bear thing or that it does show me what I like, but it also shows me what I should be in order to "fit in". I have to buy certain shampoo's to make my hair beautiful, certain clothes to make me look fashionable, eat certain foods to have a nice body.
It becomes tiring.

Yes, it is true that in today's day and age that we have been encouraging all body types and how everyone is beautiful and what not, but we still see these kinds of advertisements everywhere we go.
I feel like most people today think that they are their own individual, including myself, but when we look beyond it, I believe we can see that we are sucked into this constant need to be someone better then who we are because that is what Social Media wants us to do. They want us to give them money so they can sell more, so we will buy more, and it just continues in this big ol' circle. All they care about is that they are making money, not that we are loosing our identity.