What is beauty? Everyone seems to have an idea of it, but properly defining it proves to be a challenge. Hollywood, fashion designers, and style experts tend to set the standard for what people find beautiful. People are slowly starting to defy these standards. Until very recently, it was difficult to find a successful actress who was not extremely thin, and even our small steps in the right direction still leave us with little variety.

The result is insecure girls and women who believe that there is something wrong with them for not looking like what they see in movies. Ironically, many celebrities who are viewed as perfect do not look that way in real life. Makeup and computer editing shows us the beauty we think we need to aspire to. About twelve years ago, the men’s magazine GQ had to issue a formal apology after airbrushing pictures of actress Kate Winslet to make her appear thinner. GQ’s editor Dylan Jones said, “These days you only get two kinds of pictures of celebrities – paparazzi pictures or pictures like these which have been highly styled, buffed, trimmed and altered to make the subject look as good as is humanly possible.”

Another art that puts the body under extreme scrutiny is ballet. Five years ago, a journalist named Alastair Macaulay was attacked for describing several ballerinas as overweight. In a later article in the New York Times he elaborated on the issue by saying: “Ballet demands sacrifice in its pursuit of widely accepted ideals of beauty. …that struggle is, regrettably but demonstrably and historically in the case of many women, concomitant with anorexia.” Many people are diagnosed with eating disorders or become depressed because they cannot escape this ideal beauty image. Everywhere we go, magazines seem to tempt us by advertising makeup tricks and ways to lose weight.

Women who are naturally skinny are not necessarily in the clear. They are often judged by others as a result of jealousy. Or, they are viewed as fake and obsessed with how they look. On the other hand, women are not the only victims. Men are often compared to movie stars with toned muscles and broad shoulders.

Perfection is an illusion that we buy into everyday by reading these magazines and purchasing the cosmetics. We do not need to let Hollywood tell us what real beauty is. Being yourself is more beautiful than all of the plastic surgery in the world.