Brooke+N's+OpEd+Article

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You + Camera ≠ ModelBy Brooke Nelsen This is a teenage ritual that I will never in my life advocate for. You put on as much make up as your face can barely handle, slip into your most flattering but still pretty unattractive outfit, you call your friend with the expensive camera because they believe they are a professional photographer, and the magic is created: you have a new profile picture. But no, that is not good enough; you need a whole album dedicated to your “photo shoot”, complete with forty pictures of you pouting your lips, pensively staring off into the distance, and looking like what I am guessing is you being sexy. I am going to present you with a harsh reality you may not have realized yet: you are no model, my friend.

I’m not saying your are not pretty; you are, in your own special way. But just because you can strike an awkward pose and staring alluringly at the camera does not make you the next Gisele Bundchen, or mean that people actually want to see these pictures. When I look at you straddling a railroad track in your tacky heels and grabbing your hair and biting your lip suggestively, I go through the five stages of grief.

I first experience denial, in which I can not even believe that you would have the audacity and the falsely founded confidence to present these “artful” pictures to the world. I then move on to anger, where the mere sight of your forced smile attempting unsuccessfully to entice the viewer makes me want to punch a wall, or possibly your face.

This then turns into bargaining in which I plead to God, “if I promise to lead a more Christian lifestyle, will you please take away this photo album so that I will never have to witnessed this atrocity again?”

Then, of course, comes the depression in which I fear for the future of this generation and the false pretenses we have fallen under, the identity crisis that has affect so many of my Facebook friends. [|العاب تلبيس عرايس] [|قبة] And finally, I come to the final stage: acceptance. You make my heart hurt and I feel bad for you. But you know what? This is your choice. If you want to look completely ridiculous in your over made up face and photoshopped perfection, who am I to stop you? You go on, you revel in all the picture comments of your friends who are telling you how gorgeous you look, even though they are just saying that because it is considered bad mannered to tell someone they don’t look so great in a picture. I am glad that this makes you happy. Because if I have to look at these God-awful pictures that are there for absolutely no purpose except to hope that the comments you receive boost your self-esteem, at least something good is occurring from my pain.