Amanda's essay

What can I do as a professional artist to be a better role model for children, and show them a positive point of view?

While traveling in Boston, I saw how easy it truelly is to be pursuaded into the thought that you have to look and act a certain way, even if it is not the best way to gain self confidence or make the decisions that are good for you. I saw this imagery almost everywhere I looked. I noticed many posters that were advertising a variety of items, from alcohol to cosmetics. Each one had a young girl made up beyond belief and the most sylish clothes, acheiving a look that only wealthy person could afford. This could very easily convince a young person that buying a certain product would make them seem like the person they saw in a picture. These images are not benifitial to young adults and teenagers at all.
It could pressure people to smoke ciggarettes, because there are strong pictures showing people using the tobacco products while with friends. But all of the people on the advertisment were very thin, “beautiful” and were in a perfect setting. Children may see those kind of pictures and actually believe that they could achieve a lifestyle like that if they bought the product. It is the same idea when cosmetic companies try to sell thier products. The woman fit the discription of what some people would call perfection.
Actors and actresses are doing close to nothing to help our youth see beyond the glamour and glitter. Musicians still sing and rap about drug use, partying and situations that are not safe. In rock and hip hop music there is a strong message that drug use is exeptable. If you were to turn on a television, what would you see? You would see mostly violence, and see stories about innapropriate situations and things that children would have a hard time separating between the show and reality.
As a professional artist I could change some of these ideas. I could speak to children, as more than just a famous person. I would send a message to people about how important it is to stay true to what matters to yourself the most. Behind the showy and flashy perfect scenes, there are dangers that if you didn’t know better, you would never understand. I would educate people about how easy it is to be sucked into an idea, or a thought. Whether it is girls starving themselves to look like models, kids smoking to look more mature, or walking around with plastered fake smiles to look collected and fit into “the look”, I would tell them unfortunately they were worse off than they ever could have been before.
Who gave the notion that you had to look one way, talk one way, eat certain things, do specific activities, and even when you walk down a street, you must hold complete composure? I want to speak against this, and if people can catch on to a negative pattern so easily just by seeing things, why can’t they act in a more positive way? That is what I want to do, and what I feel needs to be done. That is what I learned on my trip to Boston.