What you see is not what you get.

Open a magazine, watch television or veg out to a movie, but when you look at the women, know that most likely their breasts have been digitally enhanced, their waistlines has been trimmed with Photoshop and their blemishes have been airbrushed away.

Like Barbie, the way the actresses and models appear is a figment of a graphic designer's imagination - they are seldom untouched photographs, according to former actress Camille Cooper, who spoke at Elizabethtown College Wednesday morning.

The problem, Cooper said, is that women judge themselves and their bodies against those unreal images and find themselves wanting. Unable to measure up, some women are consumed with self-hatred, starve themselves and even die.

We live in a media culture, said Cooper, who acted in Guiding Light and Knot's Landing. It influences the way we think, the way we feel. It influences the way we view our bodies and each other. The media created a standard of beauty we have to achieve if we want to be loved, if we want to be successful, if we want to be happy.

Using slides of magazine covers and advertisements, Cooper showed repeated examples of how the standard of beauty was created by computers, not real life.

· The photo of Demi Moore on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine didn't look like she was the mother of three, so Cooper called the magazine 17 times, she said, until they explained how the photo had been altered.

Designers removed wrinkles from Moore's forehead, circles under her eyes and smile lines around her eyes and mouth. Wrinkles on her neck were smoothed and an inch was shaved from each hip.

· Cooper showed how filmmakers used a checkered shadow effect to cover cellulite on Sharon Stone's leg in the movie Basic Instinct.

· Cher's image on a cover of Ladies' Home Journal was so altered, even Cher claims graphic artists attached somebody else's body below her head.

From the time girls are small, they are bombarded with the message that they should be beautiful. At a Toys R Us Cooper visited, an entire aisle was designated to makeup targeted toward 3- to 9-year-olds.

Adolescent magazines - YM, Cosmogirl, Seventeen - all support the idea that looking and acting sexy is what is expected of girls, Cooper said, as she flashed covers of magazines on the screen.

Girls today are told to be obsessively self-centered. They are told that the most important aspect of who they are is how they look. They are told to scrutinize every pore, every hair follicle, Cooper said.

And there's a product for every beauty obsession - Clarins for cellulite, Wonderbras for sagging breasts and perfume - to make you look and smell sexy. Each product has advertisements featuring a female image foreign to 95 percent of women who aren't actresses or models, she said.

The media endorses the obsessive beauty mindset because it brings in advertising dollars, Cooper said.

It (the media) plays on our insecurities, it manipulates us, it objectifies us, it exploits women, it rapes women in order to make money.

Women have to fight against the message of inadequacy they hear in the media every day, Cooper said. The change has to start on the inside.

She suggested that women write down one thing they like about themselves every morning. They should repeat the qualities every day until they can start believing them and feeling them, she said.

Next, women need to take action to deflate the emphasis on beauty, starting with their own involvement.

We are all creating it, she said. We're buying these products. We work in these professions. We know it's not right, but we still do it.

Not to say that women shouldn't wear makeup, Cooper added in response to a student's question, but women need to find balance in the importance they place on beauty.

Getting involved in a public way to support women is also beneficial, Cooper said. For example, she lobbied Virginia legislators to approve rewriting the state's social studies curriculum to include stories of women, Native Americans and other oppressed groups.

At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is what each of us has contributed to society, Cooper said.
blog comments powered by Disqus