Jesse McCartney’s ‘Beautiful Soul’ Plays Awkwardly in the Distance

Excessive Photoshopping is pretty easy to spot nowadays, what with people becoming more and more tech savvy and able to recognize that this:

Is not a realistic bust-waist-hip ratio. The model pictured above literally looks like a bobblehead doll, and while there are plenty of people out and about who know this is not even remotely possible, there are still impressionable young girls and boys out there who might think otherwise. I mean seriously, when a study done at the University of Central Florida finds that “nearly half of girls’ ages three to six worry about being fat and about one-third would change a physical attribute, such as their weight or hair color” (firstthings.org), something has gone terribly, terribly wrong. Now, I’m well aware that I’m not the most beautiful person in the world, but I’m okay with that. Well, I should say I’m a lot more okay with it than I was when I was seven. Photoshopping has led us to believe that true beauty includes a size -2 waist, long legs, perfect face and whatever else might come to the minds of the people behind the click of that mouse. I’ll admit, I used to wear so much makeup that it wouldn’t be out of line to say a chisel was needed to take it off every day. Why? Because I had and still have acne. And acne, so says the media and everyone else is ugly, and if you have it then you’re ugly too. Now I roll out of bed and if I’m feeling particularly motivated that morning, I’ll slap some mineral veil on my cheeks before slumping out the door. (Although I will admit, this is mostly because I’m horrifically lazy, not because I one day had an epiphany about something monumental). That epiphany came when one of the therapists I was visiting (appointments made a la trying to figure out why I couldn’t focus on anything) told me at our first meeting how beautiful I was. I’ll never forget her words, she told me I had beautiful hair, my nails were perfect and my eyes were beautiful too. This came at an important time for me, because this was during the years of my life where I thought I wasn’t beautiful at all. But hearing a complete stranger say that the features I hated were beautiful really turned my world upside down.

Sorry if this ends up sounding like a cliché YA novel, but the truth is the beauty was always there; I just needed a little help from others to see it for myself. The same can be said for everyone girl, boy, man, woman or whatever. Photoshop can tell me what one person thinks is beautiful and the media can try to tell me what society thinks is beautiful, but I’m confident that no matter what I look like, I’m beautiful to someone, but most importantly, I’m beautiful to myself.