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There is so much pressure to fit other people's standards of how one should think, behave and look. This pressure comes from all quarters, the media, self-help books, advertising, fashion gurus, family friends. This advice is fatally flawed in that it pressurizes people into becoming clones instead of individuals.

The media is the worst offender, television programmes on fashion and personal makeovers, "reality" programmes about diet and food, and the psychology thereof, all combine to tell us what size and shape we should be, how we should dress. Then many television channels carry advertising all telling us that we would be "perfect" if only we use that face cream, this lipstick or that hair colour.

Newspapers and magazines are another source of this pressure both in their articles and in their advertising. Take a look at the women's magazine section in any newsagent's shop, most of the covers will feature the headline to an article about a diet which will sculpt a "new" you, another on how to conduct your love life and another on the latest "role model", the celebrity who is the latest person we should aim to emulate in looks, size and shape.

Self-help books tell us that we would be perfect if only we try this or that psychological technique. The popular image of the modern woman tells little girls that they must be superwomen and balance their job with motherhood, being a wife and running a home to perfection. The problem is that human beings are imperfect by design and being lovable and loving is probable and possible even if you are not perfect.

Teenaged girls and boys, and some grown men and women, slavishly follow fashion whether it suits them or not. We all know at least on fashion victim. Fashion gurus tell us that we must wear this or that or be out of date and not in the groove. The recent controversy over size zero models was begun by some fashion designers who can only design for stick insects or pretty boys. It affected so many young people, girls especially who tried to starve themselves or acquired other eating disorders trying to mould themselves into impossible shapes.

All these crazy ideals are complete poppycock; what makes us interesting is how different we are, not how alike we are. Those who have the courage to reject those stereo-types and imposed images, of what they should be and just be happy to be themselves are the happiest and most interesting people. A race of identical clones is the stuff of science fiction, vivre la difference!

Learn more about this author, M.Collins.
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