Does T.V. Make You Feel Ugly?
These days, television is blamed for many evils. Most of them are related to self-esteem and body image issues that plague our culture, and are beginning to spread to those who consume our media.
It has been theorized that thin is beautiful simply because the camera adds ten pounds. “Regular” people are 
expected to conform to unrealistic standards, suitable for the unforgiving lens when they’ll never appear before it except in home videos.
There is almost no doubt that television has contributed to the rise in eating disorders and emotional disturbances. But can it be entirely blamed?
Take, for instance, Sex and the City. While masquerading as a forward-thinking show of empowerment, it portrays only women who conform to our current standards of “hotness.” It doesn’t matter if some of them are older or harsher in the face than a model; as long as they’re not fat.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer stands out in my mind as one of the few shows that has featured a main character who isn’t skinny. Tara, played by the beautiful Amber Benson, is far from overweight - she’s just built big, and when she’s next to Sarah Michelle Gellar, you would hardly believe they’re of the same species. It turned out there was plenty of room for a curvy girl on Buffy; Tara quickly became a fan favorite, and remains so to this day.
This is a personal issue for me. At fourteen, I was about 5′7″ and 160 pounds. I towered over most of my friends, and in some cases, weighed almost twice as much. I remember feeling elated when I watched an episode of Sabrina and realized that Melissa Joan Hart had a slightly bigger bottom than most T.V. stars. Perhaps there was hope for me to be beautiful, after all!
No one should have to feel like that. It’s wrong. But it’s also, in my opinion, a part of our culture that will never go away. In ancient times, women used to paint their faces with a poisonous white powder to be more pale. Early Italian women put drops from the Belladonna plant into their eyes to dilate their pupils, eventually causing blindness.
Throughout history, people - and women especially - have been willing to do ridiculous and harmful things in order to conform to arbitrary standards of attractiveness. While television makes these standards more widespread, it does not create them. We do that.
And it’s up to us to change.
Tags: pop culture, recreation, life
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Amber Benson is an absolutely fantastic person who has a burgeoning film career outside of Buffy, in case you’re interested. I wrote about her movie “Chance” which, if I remember right, she financed entirely through sales of autographed Tara action figures.