I was traveling recently and while waiting for a connecting flight, I stepped into a store to make a purchase.  One entire wall was covered completely in magazines. I stepped back for a moment to view the wall as one entity and what I noticed was that every cover (for the most part) portrayed picture perfect people.  Flawless make-up, thin bodies, stylish clothing. (There were other genres besides fashion, but even those have perfect nature/cooking/house/vacation scenes.)

Contrast this to my time spent sitting down and waiting for my flight. I watched people walking in various directions (six gates in one cluster – lots of people) and found quite a chasm from the magazine images to the many different people who walked by.  Diverse body shapes and sizes, ethnicities and ages are just a few of the differences I saw. When we try to live up to the image of picture perfect people we lose the depth and variety of who we really are.  We can also be very hard on ourselves trying to attain the unattainable image of an air-brushed, picture perfect magazine cover.

Marlayne Whitlock, LAPC
mwhitlock@ GROWcounseling.com