It’s bad enough that society holds drug addicts, murderers, and downright miscreants on a pedestal, but Hollywood also has another dirty little secret. These darling deities are pushed to the forefront of media to raise a mythical bar of standards that the rest of us are told we should try and achieve. As with most precepts in the mainstream, these ‘standards’ of beauty are anything but reality.
Photoshop touch-ups and blatant visual recreations are the norm in Hollywood. The proportions are tweaked, blemishes removed, and skin smoothed until the viewer is left with a focus-group determined vision of unattainable ‘perfection.’ Sadly enough, this creates a tidal wave of insecurities throughout all ages. Especially hard hit are adolescents as their cognitive ability to decipher reality is in its developmental stages.
How can someone claim that they love another person that they’ve never met? The answer is simple, they cannot. The idea of celebrity is a societal delusion. The idols of the silver screen are mere intangible manifestations of 20 second blurbs on ‘E TV’ combined with a constant barrage of paparazzi party pics and airbrushed magazine shoots. They are a massive group hallucination and the sooner society realizes this, the sooner relevance will reclaim the lime light.
Below are 21 before and after shots that will shed some light on the myth of Hollywood beauty.
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| Jennifer Aniston |