First Draft - 2nd Paper

November 25, 2012

Avery Jones
273 Main Street
New York, NY 35932

Dear Avery,

I hope this letter finds you well and adjusting to your new life in New York City.  I know your friends and family are extremely proud of your achievement completing high school and immediately finding a modeling position and starting to gain recognition as the beautiful young woman that you are.  I have watched you grow up over the last fifteen years and as your neighbor and someone who cares about your well being, I feel compelled to write you this letter primarily to offer you an alternative way of thinking about your new found career for no other reason but to give you perhaps some additional awareness of the potential adversity that you are likely to encounter in the world of advertising.

I certainly understand your attraction to the world of fashion and making a really good income while modeling beautiful clothing and the latest accessories.  I came of age in the early 1970’s and Twiggy, having hit the big time in the ‘60’s was still the model that we all idolized and wanted to emulate; she was tall, very thin and had an innocent angelic kind of beauty.  I hope you will understand that I don’t think there is anything wrong with women wanting to be beautiful and making themselves as desirable as possible to the opposite sex, I believe it is one of the most basic needs of our biology and this fact was highlighted by a Newsweek article entitled the Biology of Beauty where several scholars of this issue where quoted including “Nancy Etcoff, a neuroscientist who is studying human attraction at the MIT Media Lab and writing a book on the subject. "I defy anyone to point to a society, any time in history or any place in the world, that wasn't preoccupied with beauty." The high-minded may dismiss our preening and ogling as distractions from things that matter, but the stakes can be enormous. "Judging beauty involves looking at another person," says University of Texas psychologist Devendra Singh, "and figuring out whether you want your children to carry that person's genes." Newsweek clearly informs us that women make themselves attractive in order to attract the best possible genes in a partner, which therefore affords one’s offspring to not just survive but thrive.  This very basic biological drive seems to be the very basis for women’s desire to be beautiful.  It has been going on for centuries and in every culture, where women go to extraordinary lengths and even dangerous lengths to make themselves beautiful. In a Morton Report article entitled Chasing Beauty: Cultural History of Beauty Obsession the author states that “During the Renaissance, Italian women thought that large pupils were alluring and placed a toxic plant extract in their eyes to dilate the pupils. That plant still bears the name belladonna, Italian for "beautiful lady." Chinese fashion considered small feet appropriately dainty for women; the practice of foot-binding created "lotus feet," deformed appendages that didn't allow women to walk without assistance for the sake of beauty”.  It seems that long before the media and advertising were around women had an intrinsic need to enhance themselves with what they perceived was beautiful.  However I believe that advertising companies and the media have managed to use this fact to take major advantage, with very little regard, for the millions of women all over the world that it has adversely affected. 
One of the biggest issues in the world of advertising and the media is that there is an extremely unrealistic beauty that so many women are striving for.  I say unrealistic because the pictures in the glossy magazines that have been digitally enhanced and airbrushed to a point where no human being can ever look that perfect.  Therefore most of us after seeing these images of perfection have a hard time not feeling considerably unattractive and this has caused the beauty issue to take on a dangerous and unhealthy direction.  The statistics for women of your age and younger having plastic surgery is astounding and an article from The New York Times entitled How Young Is Too Young to Have a Nose Job and Breast Implants? In 2004 stated that “The number of cosmetic surgeries performed on people 18 and under reached 74,233 in 2003, a 14 percent increase from 2000, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. Girls and boys as young as 6 get plastic surgery to flatten protruding ears. Adolescents of 13 or 14 have nose jobs. And nearly 3,700 breast augmentation surgeries were performed on teenage girls last year, according to the society.” It is extremely unfortunate when children and teenagers, and no doubt their parents, view their physical appearance negatively and this of course plays havoc with their self esteem.  In another New York Times article entitled Seeking Self-Esteem Through Surgery the author Camille Sweeney highlights a young woman whose mother and sister had both received breast implants and this young girl, because she had small breasts said “I didn’t feel like a woman.” So at age 18 she followed in their footsteps and had saline implants put in and then tells us that “I just wanted to look normal, and now I do”.  Comments like this clearly leave the impression for many smaller breasted women that they must be abnormal or somehow deficient.  It seems so unfortunate that this thinking is now a part of our society’s deeply held belief system, helped by advertising, the current culture and now the latest rage of reality TV shows such as America’s Next Top Model and Extreme Makeover. I read on ABC’s website about Extreme Makeover and this is how they describe their show to the American public,  “Extreme Makeover follows the stories of the lucky individuals who are chosen for a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be given a truly "Cinderella-like" experience: a real life fairy tale in which their wishes come true, not just by changing their looks, but their lives and destinies.” There is no doubt why the viewer is left with the idea that changing one’s looks can change your life and following on in the fairytale theme, the rest of one’s life will be completely perfect and trouble free as long as the surgeon reconstructs several parts of your face, enlarges your breasts, liposuctions your thighs and enhances your lips with collagen.  Unfortunately, many people are swayed heavily by these types of shows and it brings me to one other point that I would like to make and that is regarding the high incidence of eating disorders by the young women in this country. Again the excessive focus on the need to be thin creates for us the clouded vision of the perfect woman and this creates an unhealthy obsessive distraction of diet and exercise in an attempt to reach this unobtainable goal.   The statistics for eating disorders are grave and according to the South Carolina Department of Mental Health there are seven million women in the United States who have eating disorders, they also inform us that “A study by the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders reported that 5 – 10% of anorexics die within 10 years after contracting the disease; 18-20% of anorexics will be dead after 20 years and only 30 – 40% ever fully recover” and that “The mortality rate associated with anorexia nervosa is 12 times higher than the death rate of ALL causes of death for females 15 – 24 years old.” Showing that our country’s obsession with thinness is not only serious but in many instances it is deadly. 

I am hoping that you will understand my desire to bring to your attention this important subject. You are making a really good income right now and there is no need for you to change that, however I also know that you are a very smart young women that will be able to get a college degree without too much difficulty and become just about anything you want to be that will ultimately also give you a comfortable and happy life. Therefore, perhaps once you have reached a point that this career is no longer working for you, I hope you will consider changing direction.  I trust that my letter will help you become more aware of the beauty pressures that are now also placed on you in this industry and allow you to make thoughtful decisions for yourself but also consider the possibility of one day no longer being part of an industry that perpetuates the myth that women are not beautiful unless they have significantly changed what they were born with.
My best regards to you,

Veronica