Ethics

What are ethics and how do we use them? Is it the ideal basis in which we live our lives or does it concern moreover the greater good? Divulging into a world so horrid and strewn with idiosyncrasies is where we lay our heads, and the force fed ideals of body, soul, and mind is where we sleep. We are consistently told what to look like, what to eat, what to wear, where to travel, and how much money we should be making by the time we reach 25. As women of America, our voices are silenced by motion pictures and Photoshop.

It is a time where we are most vulnerable, where our distorted body image grows and grows with each calorie that we consume. Overexerted, underweight, overweight shells of who we once were suddenly take hold of the little girls that dwell inside all of us leaving us with heartache and emptiness. We are never going to be good enough, smart enough, pretty enough and that glass ceiling is going to rise and rise until we take our last breath.

It is here, in the magazines, on the tv screen, plastered across laptops, smartphones, digital, print, and all of the above that we are encumbered by and empowered by to make ourselves the best fit and the most wanted. It is here that we compare, contrast, scrutinize, and plunder into such a void that even your therapist cannot explain. It is what lies within our minds, and burned into our hearts that we will never be the best, but we can try.

We read our books, excel in school, balance work and play, all the while micro managing a lifestyle that is only regarded well unless you are well liked. We tease and spread hate, not love, as we sink deeper and deeper into a virtual reality. A reality that is fiction, that is glorified through technology. We cannot speak directly, we cannot see for what it’s worth, and we feel nothing.

It is with this sadness, this moral reorder, that we are cast down and not up. The media holds the controls and we cannot change the channel. Is it our lives or is it someone else’s?

We are lost, and we are broken. We are distorted and rigid and unrelenting. We value our outsides more than what is within. We are women, and we are here to stay.