An airbrushed blogosphere?

Something that's been heavy on my mind lately is this: I've read in multiple places online lately that many girls are intimidated by photos of bloggers and begin to feel they are "less than" in comparison. No longer are we as women just comparing ourselves to the airbrushed models in magazines; now we are looking to bloggers!! It seems that some of us can get so caught up in wishing we looked like those girls to the point where we stop getting anything out of their content. 

Something you need to keep in mind - people do not generally post unflattering pictures of themselves. I've even tried not to. We all want to present our best to the world whether we consciously think about it or not. No one looks great in every single picture that gets taken of them, so people tend to weed out the bad and only show the good to the world. Also, I'd be willing to bet that almost all the photos that make it into the blogosphere are edited in some way. You can change lighting, coloring, hair color, etc. if you're even a little bit computer savvy or even just have an iPhone...you can smooth out your skin...you can even make yourself look thinner. This can create just as much of an artificial view of beauty to readers as magazine models. People joke, "I read it on the internet, so it must be true!" Well, you need to take photos with a grain of salt as well. And even if the girl in the photo really is that skinny in real life, who knows what she puts herself through to maintain it...it may or may not be a healthy lifestyle, though I don't dare speculate that all skinny girls have a problem. Some gals are naturally skinny no matter what they do, and even if you're not, big deal...it doesn't mean anything is wrong with you. Sure, I love to edit photos on my iPhone and even posted a review of our favorite photo apps to help you look your best. I think, though, that you have to know where to draw the line between perception and reality.

I read in a tabloid that Jessica Biel has worked out for 5 hours a day at times and that Amanda Seyfried has been known to eat only spinach and seeds all day to compensate for her "slow metabolism." Now, who even knows if the magazine was truthful or not. But anyone caught up in that kind of thing is NOT really living. If you let comparing yourself to other women drive you to that kind of point where you're over-exercising and under-eating, there's a serious problem there. You think you're trying to whittle away your body, when actually, it's your life, your happiness, and your health that are whittling away.

I think probably all women play the comparison game. You might not even realize you're doing it. But while you're out running errands, you might be subconsciously stacking yourself up to every other woman you pass by. "Am I as pretty or thin as she is?" "She looks more successful than I do." "I wish I could pull that off." Sound familiar? 

Take blogs at face value, girlies. If you get too consumed with the comparison game while perusing the blogosphere and it's affecting how you feel about yourself, I say stop looking at the ones that bother you. (Hopefully, that doesn't mean ours, though as a closet narcissist, I suppose I should be assuming ours would fit the bill - har har har!) When I was a teenager, I'd pore over Seventeen magazine and wish I looked like those models; at some point, it became a problem because I couldn't stop wishing I were different. And not in the good sort of way where something spurs you to be healthier or make reasonable improvements to your appearance. In the bad way where you don't feel comfortable in your own skin and feel self-conscious about every little thing because you don't look like someone else. So I stopped subscribing. I stopped looking at them. Remember how I said in a recent entry that not wearing makeup in front of people is really all a matter of what you're used to seeing, and once you're used to how you look without it, you realize it's not bad? Same principle applies. If looking at pictures causes you a problem, stop looking at them, and your perception will change as you get readjusted to how you look. Once you start focusing more on what is real and what is important, maybe you'll find your perception of yourself is changing...and you'll realize you don't have to look like someone else; you can just be happy looking like YOU. Magazines tend to talk out of both sides of their mouths anyway; one page says, "Look at the extreme measures these stars go to lose weight!" and "So-and-so should stop tanning because she'll age too fast!" - and then you turn the page and see, "So-and-so, what happened to your tan?" and "Get slim quick with these tips!"

We'll leave you with a no-makeup pic of KameraWhore since I've posted a couple already in the past. And many of you may have seen this already, but Dove made a short film a while back called "Evolution" that shows the transformation a model goes through for a photoshoot and then all the computer editing that follows...and we'll close with that as well.

There's certainly nothing wrong with trying to look your best!! We do it, and we love it! But there's also a fine line of when it becomes detrimental to your self-esteem. 

I say, ASSUME you are awesome, and eventually you'll believe it! Because, after all, it's true! :)

Do you compare yourself or even feel bad about yourself after seeing bloggers' pics?

(This version of the video is actually in rewind, which I think is kinda cool.)