An Intangible Image

          According to Merriam-Webster the definition of Photoshop is: To alter (a digital image) with Photoshop or other image-editing software especially in a way that distorts reality (as for deliberately deceptive purposes).
       Photoshop is a digital software that most magazines use, more often than they should; from magazines to book covers to billboards and posters, not only to remove small blemishes or acne anymore but now they're using it to alter bodies in which they deem as "acceptable" and give impressionable girls the idea that that's how they should look. In every magazine I've see and read (such as Seventeen, Teen Vogue, and even magazines aimed at young girls like Girl'l Life) you can always tell that it has been Photoshopped  now why might you need to Photoshop to the point that the altered image is almost unrecognizable to the actual person? Especially when no one actually looks as thin or has perfectly flawless skin as they Photoshop some actress to look like, why the need? It's because we're so accepting and we've grown up thinking how you and I should act that more and more young girls are trying to reach the level of the digitally altered image, the intangible image, that the percentage of negative thoughts in body image are affecting more women.
      But you should ask yourself: Should the media be the only ones held accountable? Not necessarily. Parents have a huge influence on the lives of their children. Each choice the parents make for the child does influence the child. How? When young, impressionable children aren't supervised while interacting with the media, no one is there to tell them what's right from wrong and why it's right or wrong and why they shouldn't always believe in the media. Without being taught what's right from what's wrong, the child is at risk of attempting things that they see in the media such as what they see in magazines like the digitally altered images of the "perfect body". With the thoughts that we need to look like that, only has an impact on who we are, how we act, and what we try to aim to look like unless someone tells us why we don't need to look like the actresses and musicians in magazines, movies, and other forms of media. 
      The fact that we keep allowing the media to impact us in these ways is what causes the negative affects, not necessarily the media itself. If more parents taught us and encouraged us that we don't need to look a certain way, or act a certain way to get someone's attention or to fit in, we wouldn't be in the hands of the media. The reason that they keep Photoshopping and showing impossible standards we could never live up to is because we continue to encourage and accept that those images we see is what "normal" actually is. 

(480 words)