Sublime: 0%-100%

A woman's body image is a crucial fraction of her being. A negative portrait of oneself is detrimental to the love that a woman has for herself. Where does a woman compile, compose and conform the picture that she draws of her body? In the most simplistic of terms we can allocate a ton of responsibility on the media; but the media is such a grandiose term wearing many masks. Television stabs. The Music Industry bludgeons. Movies strangle. Magazines and other Print Media set ablaze. The World Wide Web fires rounds of ammunition.

Each Medium slowly slaughters the image that the average woman has of her body by both obtrusively and subliminally setting the standard of what a desirable woman should look like.

All of this resurfaced in my mind as I began to notice a trend in one of my favorite juicy magazines, US Weekly. Although I am a self-proclaimed "anti-disclaimer," I must state that I am fully aware of the notion that US Weekly is a silly tabloid magazine with lots of unnecessary information regarding people who live their lives under the spot light; however, it is a great source of entertainment for it's many readers for whatever various reasons. I enjoy it mostly for the clothes, sure, I read Nylon, Elle, Vogue and W to name a few of my subscriptions for fashion, but US Weekly gives juicy weekly doses of people that wear fabulous garments to various fabulous events and the unnecessary juicy details about these events. . .I simply cannot help myself when the mail arrives every Thursday with a brand new US Weekly!

This week, I read about Mariah and Nick's secret wedding ( which I am very happy about), some squandering stories about Jamie Lynn Spears baby shower and also the ongoing feud between Heidi and Lauren on The Hills Before getting to all of the details about Mariah's beautiful secret wedding, I came across the "Who Wore It Best?' section. In this section, two people (usually women. . .although once 2yr old Suri Cruise was compared to a grown woman. . .) are compared wearing the same dress and over each woman is a percentage of 100 that corresponds with her competitor. I began to look back at all of the issues that I had lying around, and I noticed a trend. The woman with less body mass, in almost all cases, received a higher percentage. Curves, breasts, tummies, hips and booties will not get you a passing grade; the smaller contestant consistently wins, even if she doesn't necessarily look incredibly better in the dress.

I would like to briefly explore what impact this has on readers of US Weekly. The standard of beauty and attractiveness is subliminally outlined for readers. Although the average reader will not recognize the effect of these photos with judgmental numbers over them; thats the thing with subliminal messages: they silently attack the psyche.

From now on, while watching movies, music videos and sitcoms try to look beyond the obvious and search for the hidden themes and correct the effect that they have on your perception of yourself and others.