Camera time.

Pictures, the old age way of collecting memories in a slightly more permanent way than our fragile minds. Memories are great, I mean sure who does not want a picture of a new born or when a cloud resembles a ship floating powerfully in the sky. A picture of a group of friends can be used to look back on when down to see times are not always bad. A picture can also change the world, it can wake the world up to a cause and shake beliefs to their foundations. For instance the striking image of that brave man in Tiananmen Square or the photo of Kim Phuc Phan Thai burned horrifically during a napalm attack in Vietnam.

Yes this all seems great but as with everything in life there is a dark side to events. It is the seemingly unstoppable combination of vanity, social networking sites and digital cameras. Every little thing for some obscure reason known only to them has to be recorded and shown to everyone on the Internet. Whole albums dedicated to their new fringe. They have had it cut to resemble something like Posh Beck‘s or whatever ‘celebrity’ they wet their knickers over when reading heat magazine. 360 photographs of this haircut to make sure people see every glorious angle of it. Yet the only people who are going to see it, who will take the effort to drag the mouse towards the direction of the photographs and click whatever times necessary to see it would be friends or family. These people you would assume are people you interact with in everyday life, and in turn would see it anyway. If someone truly had to put it up as someone they want to see it could not, then I’m sure a singular one photo would suffice.

So now they have 50 different albums with 100 or so photos in each one that makes a lot of photos. Do not fret though readers they don’t stop there, they now go on to comment each one of their own pictures with self deprecating comments. Tagging all their photos with words like ‘fat’, ‘rolls’ ‘ugly’ they wait like make up laden vultures to see if a nice comment from a friend arrives. As always it does, a fellow explorer of the interweb soon argues with their friend. ‘Oh no you are beautiful hunny don’t be silly.’ This at first seems nice and a lovely thing to do, but on closer inspection the real truth is revealed. The friend which complimented also has photos, and said photos are also numerous and are also tagged with self loathing phrases. So it would seem they do it in the hope that their friend returns such a favor which they, of course, do.

This of course is not a mere matter of vanity and pride. It, if anything, shows how desperately tragic the life of a teenage girl must be. As a male the ideal may not be as strong to look ‘perfect’ but it is there and grows stronger every day. But with the female of the species the constant and powerful pressure put on them by the mass media has created millions of woman with little or no self confidence. Feeling so low about themselves they take as many photos they can and only show the ones which they feel reflect them best. They then proceed to pick about that photo and find any flaws they can, real or not. They hungrily seek compliments; however they know those who do so are as insecure as them and because of that their opinion is invalid. On the march for approval they will never realize, chasing a dream thought up by sadly the only people who are awake. While I may attack things like facebook or those who take the pictures, the ones at fault are the media and the advertisers. They seek to milk every person’s soul for as much money as they can. They poison and wreak havoc in good and honest people. The most upsetting thing is, no matter how much any one says this in all likely hood nothing will change.

Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months. Oscar Wilde.