Beauty Standards

I recently saw this 37 second video that was featured on Upworthy: http://www.upworthy.com/see-why-we-have-an-absolutely-ridiculous-standard-of-beauty-in-just-37-seconds?c=reccon1

In this video you see this model who is natural, raw and beautiful from the beginning of the video. Throughout the entirety of the video you see how much they change her for this photo shoot: they add pound of make up, hair extensions and just about everything in between. It goes on to show how much the photo is edited. Her eyes become larger, and any dark circles or blemish is erased from her face. They cut down the size of her stomach,tone her body, stretched out the size of her legs, and made her entire skin tone a lighter shimmery shade. 

Knowing the process of that makes me change my mind on magazines. First off nobody actually looks like that since its all photoshopped, airbrushed and fake. Why are magazines representing that on the cover of their label? Is the message to girls of all ages that we should look like this? Magazines are suppose to be inspiring, insightful and empowering or at least it should be. The model they altered to look like that doesn't even look like that at all. It doesn't make sense to alter the way someone looks completely but at the same time set a "standard" that this is what we have to look like. 

I think that magazines should spend less time fixing the way a model looks completely and photograph someone real that we can relate to. Nobody can relate to a pretty model without trying to change everything about themselves and feeling ugly. If the cover had an image of someone who is unedited, a real human we feel like we care about. Women and girls want to see someone that can be a role model who is fierce because they are who they are, not who people want them to be. Something that girls in society struggle with is being confident because we do not look like what the standards are in society or that we don't have enough skin showing but then if we do its considered slutty. There need to be better role models and the media needs to do a better job of appropriately depicting them.