The world has become so media-oriented that everywhere we turn, we get bombarded with images of photo shopped beautiful women in television, movies, and the internet, even on billboards on the street. My four-year old niece told me that she needs to go on a diet. There are even air-brush makeup kits available for sale to the general public that helps you look photo-shopped. Really? Photo-shopped is the real ‘beautiful’ these days?What is happening to this world? Audre Lorde’s poem “Good Mirrors are not Cheap” is an excellent form of poetry that directly reflects the horrible consequences of the current social perception of beauty created by the media’s constant objective of achieving flawless perfection, causing men to have unrealistic expectations and women to feel less competent and beautiful creating a general dissatisfaction among people; she highlights how perceptions need to be changed instead, not the literal appearance of the individual.

For my project, I want to create a video through still images that tells a story of a girl. The stills start with a text slide zooming out which says: “Once upon a time…” The background music at this point would be “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves. We see a girl, smiling, having fun, and just being herself. The still images show her walking. She is at this point in sweatpants, without a care in the world about the way she is dressed. Her parents enter in one slide and it is shown that they are yelling at her. The music now slowly changes to Evanescence’s “Good Enough”. The next slide shows her changed into different clothes, dressed in a more feminine, sophisticated apparel giving in to her parents’ wishes as to what is beautiful.

She continues walking until she meets her friends. They talk about her in a negative way. The next slide shows her with her hair and makeup done in a flawless way.
She continues walking until she meets a boy, whom she is obviously attracted to. He is seen to be making fun of her as well because of how she looks. She changes her appearance one more time.

She comes home sees a mirror, and a transformation is made in cut-outs from magazines, which leaves her nothing as to how she really is. But she still does not approve of herself. The mirror distorts her reflection.

She is seen to be upset, and then she realizes that she is happiest when she is herself, pleasing only her and no one else. The music changes to Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful”. She changes back to her sweats and t-shirt. A rewind is seemed to be made of the slides showing her walking backwards. She meets the boy and leaves him, meets the girls, leaves them, sees her parents and hugs them. She is seen to be dancing in front of the mirror now. The video ends with a picture of her in front of the mirror posing like a supermodel in sweats and no makeup that says: . “I am beautiful because I am real.” The last slide fades to black…leaving a text slide that says: “and she lived happily ever after…”

The moral of the story is that you are beautiful no matter what. You don’t need any makeup to feel that way.

Stop lying.
I watch “Lie to Me”
and I know you.
I know you lie
To me
All the freaking time.
Ugh!
You’re a liar.
997 billion dollars in corporate fraud…
Ain’t got nothing on you
Lies compromise our democracy
Henry Oberlander could have undermined the whole British banking system
He said: Everybody is ready to give you something that you’re hungry for.
I wish I was better…taller….good looking.
Lying is backing up fulfilling our fantasies…
Bruno mars…”Just the Way You Are”….
Really?
You sing that I will smack you
Men lie 8 times more about themselves about themselves than other people.
I want you to lie to me…
Tell me you love my messy hair in the morning…
Tell me I look beautiful no matter what when I’m sick
Go on…lie to me.
Koko the Gorilla blamed her pet kitten for ripping a sink out of the wall…
Babies fake a cry, pause and then cry when someone’s near
We’re all masters of deceit
That’s why I wear my fake RayBans…
“I did not have sexual relations with that woman. Miss Lewinsky. I never told anybody to lie. Not a single time. Never.
These allegations are false. And I need to go back to work for the American people.”
Famous words.
Distancing language, arched eyebrows, too much detail, all dead giveaways
Freud: no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips
Smiles, too strong an eye contact, warmth, all giveaways
I know you.
Lie to me
Hmph.

She’s insecure, unsure, in search of the perfect cure
But she knows she’s better than this
Striving, trying, attempting, struggling, putting heart and soul into
Deserving that assumed true love’s one immortal kiss

What has become of the one with the pink bow in her hair and smile on her face?
Nowadays what wretched heartbreak does she mourn in all black?
Treading mirror to mirror, looking for the one who will accept her no-longer innocent beauty
So that she can look at herself like she used to…she craves her old self back

The faux hair and deep makeup are all that define her now, how damaged
Can a person be…to not be able to see beyond the distorted reflection on the mirror
Is there not a slight bit of self-worth left?
A glimmer, a spark, a speck, not even a flicker?

Utter chaotic pandemonium of self-loath in the early morning
Which may only be cured through hours of heavy ornamentation
On good days. Gone are days of rosy-red innocent smiles at the ground
Now her cheeks adorn merely tainted carnation

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, tell me now or not at all…
Do I perhaps, oh please, look at least passable today?”
“Sad, poor, baby, hush”…he says…” You’re my being…
I don’t care if you don’t…it’s okay,” he looks away.

Never good enough for you, it hurts, for you’re the one I love
Not a word I say goes unpunished; not a word you say goes unheard.
Every morning I wake, every night I go to bed, everyday
I want to be good enough for you, long enough you’ve suffered

Five years of self-punishment can lead to insanity,
Slit wrists, broken mirrors and a suicide note
Of all the blood-tainted mirrors and tear-etched pain severe
What mirror was too costly to keep her once-exuberant soul afloat?

Mifta Mahmud Cornea

Dr. Sigmund Freud was the first to suggest that mental disorders need not be pertained from birth. A person’s childhood, experiences, all add up to the sanity of the mind. The basic idea of the pleasure principle is that we strive for that which makes us happy, and avoid things that give us pain. The reality principle is the understanding that in order to attain pleasure, a painful road may need be taken.

Sometimes, we need to feel the pain to experience pleasure, and vice versa. As the Fresh actress Leslie Caron so skillfully put it, “in order to have great happiness, you have to have great pain and unhappiness- otherwise, how would you know when you’re happy?”

Sigmund Freud highlights children’s perceptions and analyses their behavior. When I was a kindergarten teacher, I noticed many ways that children act out, Strange as it is, objects seemed to hold a different value than that on its own. Rather, one child would be beating up another just because they innocently happened to use one of their crayons did not necessarily mean that the angry child was an avid artist and extremely possessive about his materials which assist him in creating dinosaur and space cowboy masterpieces, but rather, they happen to be gifts from a parent they tend not to see much.

Jealousy was also a common characteristic, although subtle. Children are very sharp at that age (2.5-4 years old) and are very conscious of their surroundings and behaviour despite what we would like to believe. Little competitive exercises helped relax these impulses. However, a shiny lunchbox, or not being the first one to be picked to answer a question by the teacher, or being the last one to be picked up, are all social status factors for these little intelligent beings.

The pleasure principle does play in quite well when we consider the illustration of children. They do what they have to to get what they want, and the journey need not be painless. A cry for attention is a neurologic painful attempt to attain what they need.

When I was reading Freud’s observation of the infant, I was amazed as to how the child would throw his toys to believe that he is the one choosing to let them go, a method of coping with his mother’s abscence. I once had a child whose dog had died quite recently, and all he would do in class was draw a little blob which vaguely resembled a puppy, write the letters “D-G-O” beside it, and then tear up the paper into bits. The same theory can fall in. I didn’t understand at that time, but after reading Freud’s ideas, I guess it makes sense now. Amazing.

Mifta Mahmud Cornea

Copernicus and Galileo were mocked for their belief that the earth revolves around the sun, not quite so for their absurd theory in a world that believed the rise and set of the sun could only mean that the sun revolves around the earth, but rather due to a lack of knowledge of the audience. If one strongly believes in a certain theory, it may become difficult for them to see a contrasting idea. We fear what we do not know.

What Plato attempts at signifying through Socrates’s eyes in his book “Republic” (Book Seven) is a similar scenario, consisting of a group of prisoners who have been condemned to a dark cave, where it is ensured that they cannot move their heads, so that they may only see the wall ahead and the shadows cast from the fire behind them. He considers this hypothetical picture to mirror that of human knowledge, portraying that we know only what we see. The group of individuals consider only the shadows on the wall to be the entire universe, as that is all that they know.

He describes how if an individual from the group is abruptly forced to face the earth as we know it, away from the dreary cave and into the light, he would be shocked, intimidated, disturbed even. The change may not be welcome to him, nor is it probable that it would be much appreciated. He may rather choose to believe what he knew the world to be previously than what he is seeing now.

Slowly will the constraints of his mind unfold and gradually will he learn. He would learn to recognize items of nature, and then objects of astronomical study. Bit by bit will the reality become real to him. Then will he notice the sun, the great granter of light. His studies and observations would lead him to comprehend its intricacies, that it is an object on its own, and not a reflection, that it is the reason for the seasons, the reason he could see, the reason this world is so different from the one he once knew.

Taking a reroute back to present day, its unmistakably the same situation. We believe what we are told, we believe that which we see. But we fail to imagine what other knowledge there may be in the world and beyond which we have not yet been acquainted with. We may even shake our heads and let the thought pass, marking it as ridiculous. Similarly to the situation above, when we do discover new gen we are struck dazzled, and amazed, believing it to be the source of all reason, illuminating our once-dark mind on the matter.

Thus the allegory of the cave truly underlines the characteristics of human perception, portraying the difficulties in transition from either light to dark or light to dark, of comprehension and understanding and most importantly, analysis and acceptance of the vast world of knowledge.