The Strive to be Perfect

The first blog that I found made me so sad. It is about a fifteen year old girl who is taking drastic measures to be skinny and that she will not stop until she is there. May I emphasize that she is only fifteen?! She is most likely appealing to people in the same position as she is because most people are not going to help her in the way that she wants help. She is appealing to people that have already gone through the same thing as she is going through now, hoping to get their advice on how they reached their weight-loss goal- pretty much trying to find different ways of starving yourself and depriving the body of proper nutrition. The group of people that she is not appealing to are parents, mentors, and anyone in the health field because they all know that this is extremely unacceptable, dangerous, and very harmful to the mind and body. On one of her posts she is talking about how many calories she had eaten that day: "Today I had about 656 calories. Disgusting." and also tells us how many calories she burned in which she says wasn't enough:  "I burned around 350 calories on exercise ( not enough)." She is definitely using a very emotional appeal to get peoples attention and hoping by taking such drastic measures someone will notice and try to help her right away.

The second blog that I found, I really enjoyed reading and I encourage everyone to take the time to read it because it applies to everyone. The way he presents the article is fantastic and his writing style makes you want to read more, it's very addictive. Instead of talking about himself, what he thinks, and the struggles that he faces, he gives examples that everyone can relate to; men and women: "Everyone has that special dream to be perfect. Scrawny men wish to have more muscle, while conscientious women hope to slim down. The strive for perfection has crossed all of our minds at some point in time." He is literally appealing to the entire world because through out his whole post he uses the word "we" meaning we all feel this way and we all struggle with this. I completely agree with him; no matter how perfect you may think you are and no matter how you come off to others that you are the most confident person in the world, there is, without a doubt, something that you would change or improve about yourself. The only person that he is not appealing to is God, because he has no imperfections. He never created imperfections, he created different kinds of beauty to make everyone unique and just like the blog presents, "Perfection is just one of the billions of man-made assumptions we create for ourselves, like being tall, short, slender, or over-sized.", perfection or imperfection does not exist on Earth.

The two blogs that found both tell us that everyone has their own perceptions of beauty. In the first blog she thinks being thin is beauty and the second blog talks about how women hope to slim down and men hope to gain more muscle.These two blogs I found can relate to the book, An Interdisciplinary Reader. Violence and its Alternatives. In chapter three, "The Idea of Violence", by C. A. J. Coady, talks about how many people have different views on what violence is and over time there have been so many different definitions and thoughts of what "violence" really is. This is the same for my blogs overall question: "What is beauty?" Over time and through media, peoples perception of what beauty is and what you have to do and look like to be considered "beautiful and perfect" has evolved enormously and will most likely still keep changing, unfortunately. (We need to believe that we are perfect just the way we are!) The audience of this book, just like the second blog I talked about, appeals to everyone because no matter what we do, everyone is going to have their own view on what something is and are going to have their own thoughts and definitions on a particular matter.


Katie.


"Rather, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God’s sight." -1 Peter 3:4


Coady, C. A. J. "The Idea of Violence." An Interdisciplinary Reader. Violence and its Alternatives. Ed. Manfred B. Steger, Nancy S. Lind. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. 23-38. Print