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This headline might seem a bit extreme but after my post yesterday about the dramatic video illustrating a fat lady becoming a model via photoshop I am a bit concerned.

I have friends, cousins, and nephews who all read magazines and watch movies. They see these stunning women and chiseled men and think that they need to strive to become these things. I have heard talk recently of clothes stores being blamed for young girls wearing padded bras, I have heard talk for years about Television causing violence and movies causes crime. What about photoshop?

Is photoshop not contributing to anorexia, bulimia and other weight related and image related diseases? Should we not be calling for good photographs of real people instead of real photographs by bad photographers who are good at photoshop and make the impossible real?

I say bring on the wrinkles and imperfections, that is what is real, that is what is attractive to me. I don’t like every women I see on a magazine cover to be airbrushed in to goodness. It’s a big fat farce and I for one do not accept it.

Yes I read these magazines but I do not think that these women exist anymore. Maybe magazines need to start printing disclaimers stating how much photoshopping has been done:

There are certain things that people do, that people know to do and not to do in public and in places of social interaction. However, there are certain people who forget about these social norms when they are intoxicated and make everyone else feel very awkward and leave the party area.

I was at a mates annual house party (thanks bud, what a ripper!) minding my own business being all chilled out on a comfy chair with some close friends when El Doos (I shall name him) stumbles along and sits next to us. We are smoking the hubbling and meeting one another and I’m still chilled and not saying much as I am in a bit of a spaced place. Cool, I thought. Not so much:

El Doos: I don’t know you, introduce yourself. (I know the host, strange that HE doesn’t know ME).

Who asks you to introduce yourself to them? Don’t you just introduce yourself in that case?

Nic: -stands up- Hi, I’m Nic, nice to meet you bud.
El Doos: -shakes hand-
Nic: -sits down, spaces-

Five minutes pass and I think I have ridden over this little social speed bump, apparently I was sorely mistaken.

El Doos: OK, it’s official, I’ve made up my mind, I hate you -looking at me-.
Nic: -spaced-
El Doos: Ja, look I’m just honest, so when I don’t like you I’ll tell you, so that’s what I’m doing.

Ok, now I need to interject here; This moron has just told a table of 10 people that he hates me. Someone tell me what the normal response to this would be. There is no such thing. So what followed led to awkwardness and us leaving the hubbly… Dammit.

Nic: OK, that’s perfect with me, but if you don’t like me do me a favour and leave me the fuck alone. If you don’t like me, stop talking to me, get up and walk off bud -not so spaced anymore-.
El Doos: Why you getting so angry?
Nic: Well you know, I love it when a strange guy that no one knows tells me that he hates me and then expects me to be his best mate. There are things called social norms, some of us don’t like them, some of us hate them in fact, but in certain contexts you need to fucking use them or you put yourself and others in situations just like this little gem right here. Got me?

We all (the nine other people at the table) stand up and walk off leaving El Doos to his own device. What a wanker.

Going through the DSTV channels on a lazy Sunday afternoon i stumbled across The Contender. The Contender is a reality TV show based around boxing. However many fighters that couldn’t cut it on their own in the world of boxing have been thrown together in a house to train and compete against one another for a shot at some title or another. That’s not really important. At the end of each episode two boxers go head to head in a five round fight where one of them loses and is eliminated.

The shocking part of this little story is that at these fights families are present. Now I’m not talking about brother, father, mother family. The family present at the fight on this evenings show were children, the boxers children, with their mothers/grandmothers watching over them.

What message are we teaching our children by sending them to a boxing ring containing their fathers? The one little girl (maybe 10 years old) was shouting, jumping, screaming waving her arms yelling at/for/with her father to either kick the other boxers ass or for her father not to have his ass kicked. He lost, she cried, looked dissapointed and upset that her father had lost. This child had just witnessed her father take a voluntary beating in the name of money and was upset that he lost.

Look, I’ve never seen my father get a butt whoopin’ and I’m still pretty messed up. Imagine what this child is going to grow up believing in later in her life. It’s ok to solve problems through violence. Violence is ok when it’s for monetary gain. My father did it so why can’t I?

I just think that it is absolutely horrific that this is what we as viewers have become. We are willing to see people eat things, beat people, fight, scream, cheat, deface love all in the name of ratings on a TV show. It’s not for me.