I’ve been thinking a lot about this TED talk I watched on modelling and images:

The ideas raised in the talk that I’ve been thinking about are:

• The idea that photoshopping is the least of it. That these images are so far removed from reality anyway, that it is almost beside the point that they’ve been photoshopped.
• The idea that she’s a model and even she doesn’t look like the images of her. She shows a set of slides showing 2 images taken around the same time – one modelling, one “real life”:

• The idea that being beautiful is like winning the lottery. You either win or you don’t.
• The idea that life isn’t instantly better if you are beautiful. Her life doesn’t resemble the lifestyle that appears in these images. She gives an example of a photo of her looking sexy when at the time, she’d never had a boyfriend and felt really uncomfortable touching this guys.
• That on the other hand she does get minor benefits from being beautiful, like avoiding a speeding ticket.

I guess the question for me behind all this is: “Is being beautiful what I really want? Why? What do I think will happen if I was instantly changed to being beautiful? How would my life change? Why would being beautiful make it change?”