“There you go. My diet chart for the fortnight”.
“But Sheena, you can’t survive on oats and salad for a fortnight.”
“No, Mom I am not hearing anything. Did you see I gained 0.5kg in the past month?”
“Sheena, but you- “
At that moment Sheena went into her room and shut the door. She glanced at the picture on the wall. Yes, she had to be on the same footing as Manushi Chillar. She put on some music and started skipping.
What you read just now is prevalent in most houses today. Youngsters these days are very conscious of their figure. They have a mindset that if they are not skinny, then it’s bad, like very bad. Why? Let’s find out.
Well, I had said to my cousin, “Do you even realize that you’ll blow away if there is a sudden gust of wind?”
“Oh shut up! Haven’t you seen that movie where the girl got rejected because of her weight? On the other hand, the thin girl won the boy,” she replied.
A recent study claims that young boys and girls look up to actors/actresses as their role models. They feel obliged to stay as slim as their role model. They feel that they should use the product endorsed by their favorite celebrity.
Actors promote vanity because they always have to be anorexic thin and wear designer clothes. Young girls develop poor body image issues at an early age because they feel like they cannot look like the actors in movies and television.
My cousin eats Kellogg’s Special K just because Deepika Padukone tells the viewers that she maintains her slim figure by eating the same. My neighbor has a dark complexion. He keeps saying that he feels inferior to the fair boys in his class. What does he do? Well, he thinks that using Fair and Handsome crème will help him. After all Shah Rukh Khan does tell us that men become fair after using the crème for three weeks. Incidentally, the advertisement had to be taken down because of the false promises made by the company. Quite a number of advertisements force the artists to say untrue things about their product so that they have a huge market among the fans of the artist.
People fail to notice the hard work put in by their favored artists. The youth notice the lavish life the actors lead and wish for the same. They make up their mind to become a film star, leave their home and relocate to realize their dream. They soon realize that getting into the film industry is not an easy path. Their expenses exceed their income. They fall into depression and look for shortcuts. True, they might taste ‘success’, but the success is short-lived.
If an actor makes a big mistake the media is all over it so fans and people think that it is okay to make such a mistake. Almost all actors party and drink past midnight. While driving back home, they drive under the influence of alcoholic drinks. On being caught by the police, they try to get away by offering money to the police. This habit is morally wrong. This leaves a very bad impact on the teenagers who view the particular actress as their role model.
Actors and models are basically pretenders, if you are inspired by a portrait of a model or a movie then you don't appreciate real life, that's called fantasizing or dreaming, that's not what a role model is. If you look up to a model as a role model, you're going to be extremely unhealthy and if you look to actors realistically they aren't any better mentally or physically. Acting is a demanding job and some actors have lost themselves in characters.
We have come to a position where we can say that actors and models are not good role models.
