Body beautiful or body confused?

I recently came across a video of a reality tv star Heidi Montag who not so long ago had 10 or more surgical procedures in 1 day. Her frame of mind has changed from how she first felt about surgery and I feel the need to express my thoughts on this topic. As a woman myself I feel women in general are put under so much pressure to have the image of the ideal woman. But the major question is "what is the ideal woman?"

There was a point in my life where I really wanted breast implants and went crazy searching for the best plastic surgeons in the UK. I thought If I had bigger boobs I would feel more womanly, now I ask myself who gave me the thought that having big boobs makes you more womanly? I continuously watched videos on breast enlargement and the more I watched the more I became concerned about the risks. I eventually researched womens after results and to my surprise there were quite a few negative that really put me off and since then I have permanently ruled out surgery for myself.

When I watched extreme makeovers I would have been 1 of the first to judge women who go through these surgeries, diets etc to enhance their appearance but that is because of a lack of knowledge and ignorance. It is only recently I done some research on the history of the ideal woman and suprisingly it goes back to many many years ago within slavery times. In those years the ideal woman should have had a thin nose, slim body frame, pert bust and silky long natural hair. Women would stuff their bras with tissue, bleach their hair & skin, straighten their hair etc. Now adays that has sligghtly changed. Bleaching is still on a rise, straigthening hair but now we have cosmetic surgery which is hugely expanding.

Some say the ideal woman is a woman with bleach blonde hair, big boobs and thin framed. Some say a woman with a small waist, curvy hips, tanned skin and big boobs, some say a woman who is thin all over........so which one is it?

I personally feel the media are a major influence on women & men! The media tends to show us what they believe is the ideal woman and so many of us are really taken by this to the point we begin to change the way we look to look like what we see on the tv and in magazines. The media tell women this is how you should look and they tell men this is what your girlfriend/wife/partner should look like.

The media are very aware of the strong influence they have on women and are very aware that women spend a lot of money on magazines, watching reality shows to look and feel like these women they see being advertised. For many years the media have promoted diets, exercise regimes, fashion musts and the ideal look a woman should have. What they fail to promote is what some of these things cause..... eating disorders, drug abuse, body strain, stress, debt, intense surgical procedures etc

Women are beginning to lose their own identities as they are trying so hard to be someone else, someone who society sees as beautiful. How many times do we see Kim Kardashian, Rihanna, Cheryl cole in magazines???? to be beautiful do we have to walk around with bright red hair? whitened teeth? full make up on? botox? what is it that we are actually telling ourselves?......................that we are not beautiful the way we are and that these celebs are beautiful?

Yes they are beautiful but we fail to realise that they are in the public eye and are put under so much pressure to look perfect on a daily basis. If they attempt to live a day being natural the media are so malicious and will say things to really break them. How we see them in a magazine or on tv is not how they look naturally there is a lot of hair, make up, styling and editing put in to their looks. I find it quite shocking how magazines will enhance body parts on a woman to make her look perfect, there are a lot of female celebs who notice this themselves and start to feel they need to change certain things on their bodies. celebs are influenced by what others say about them also, if anything they gain more insecurities than the average woman does. It is easier for them to reform their images as they have enough money to do all these surgical procedures and many plastic surgeons will not turn them away!

Plastic surgeons need money and will really make you believe that a little surgery can make you look better. But a little surgery can lead to multiple major surgeries this is what they will not tell you. There have been many incidents of surgeries gone wrong and once it has gone wrong sometimes it can never be fixed, sometimes it ends up in death!

I am not going to judge women who go through these surgeries. Some people say its ignorance, some say they are stupid or vain they simply have an insecurity. We all go through insecurities but we all react differently to our insecurities.
The best thing for us to do is be supportive and show them the pros and cons of changing their appearances. Watching the heidi montag video I felt proud of what she had to say, she does send out a positive and truthful message to women. What she went through must have been very hard, yes it was her choice but you need to consider what made her feel the need to change her looks in such a dramatic way in the first place. The answer is THE MEDIA!

It seems being natural is a disease in the modern world and being surgically enhanced is the way forward. If this is the case how do we know who we really are???