This I Believe
“Do these pants make my hips look big?” Asks my sister when I walk into her room the morning we leave for school.
“What’s the difference?” I mumble under my breath because I’m really indifferent to the idea whether her hips are big or not. Why is it that society has formed this mold for us? The media has stolen our individual identities when they try to make us into one image. Why do we believe that if we stray from it we’ll somehow disappear into nothingness? I don’t believe that society has any right to step into our lives and tell us how to live. What has the media done to our lives? They control what we wear, how we act, how we celebrate. They control who we are.
How many commercials have you seen claiming to make you look more presentable? They compare you to some guy/ girl with a perfect body and say ‘With three easy payments of blah, blah, blah you could look more like him/ her.’ Somewhere through the years society has decided it is no longer acceptable to have anything less than washboard abs, perfect hair, toned, impeccable fashion sense, among other things. Who in real life is all this? Why does society want us to be someone we’re not instead of accepting that everyone is different and that people come in all shapes and sizes? We spend our whole lives chasing the immaterial things, so consequently we miss what really matters in life. This unfortunately is what drives the impulse of humans to change who we are in order to fit in.
Our media is promoting violence and abuse more than anything else. Why is it that the most influential medium for us as a people teaches us immoral lessons? In this way the media is very contradictory. The government and our parents are telling us one way to be and the T.V. and music we listen to are instructing us to act in a very different way. Mom and dad tell you to be kind to others and rap videos show drive by’s and stealing. The lessons these youngsters are being taught will eventually ruin our society if we don’t do something about it. I don’t understand how today ten year olds know some words I never knew until I was in high school. I believe that we should be able to show our kids what real life is like but, we need to emphasize the difference between right and wrong.
In today’s world we are more concerned about ourselves instead of others. Holidays used to teach us to give and show love to others. Now holidays are all about an excuse for presents and focus on oneself. Media has taken over is holidays. In the past few years Christmas has been trained more and more on Santa Claus and Frosty the Snowman than what should be the focus of Christmas. Easter is increasingly being inundated by the bunny instead of Jesus Christ. The media is leading us to forget about our roots all together.
This influence of the media in our lives is putting too much pressure on us as a people to change. Even if you are strong willed you can notice yourself beginning to conform. I think the media’s influence should be rationed. The world is a better place with diversity and traditions. If not for all that we would be the same and life would be eternally boring. The media has stolen our individual identity and to claim it back we need to act as individuals and live our lives on our own.