Maddy+H's+Op-Ed+Article

media type="file" key="maddyh-muckrakers-2012.mp3"

We, as a society, are forgetful.

And no, I don’t mean that none of us can remember to put on deodorant in the morning, or that we perpetually lock our keys in the car. No, I mean that we too often forget that people are PEOPLE, not just “things” to be judged or idolized. Look at the commercial advertising Carl’s Jr.’s new burger, for instance. It shows a pretty blonde sitting in a drive-in movie theatre, a fast-food bag on her lap, presumably about to whip out a hearty sandwich and consume it in a fairly normal manner. It’s what you would expect, no? OF COURSE they would use an attractive woman to sell their product, that’s just your go-to, cut-and-dried marketing technique. But they go further- they show clips of the model sliding out of her clothes, they zoom in to her spray-tanned breasts, they show sweat running down her neck as she tears into a jalapeno with bared teeth… It, quite frankly, disgusted me. But more than that, it made me sad. It made me sad that the creators of the commercial were so intent on selling their product that they would put near-pornography on television. It made me sad that her parents would have to watch their daughter make love to a sandwich during commercial breaks. And it made me sad that millions of Americans now see this model as a “thing,” as a sex symbol and nothing more. I suppose she merely wanted to share with the world a body she is proud of, and she indeed has become an object of desire for males across the nation. But that’s the problem: she is an object. A body, a toy, not a human being. Or at least that’s what we have made her.

When you see a homeless person sleeping in the park amid piles of filthy clothing and stuffed plastic bags, do you really think of that man or woman as a __person__? A person with a heart, mind, and soul, with a pulse and a story and insecurities and love? Or do you just see an alcohol-soaked shell of a person, a thing that the world chewed up and spat out? When you see that actor in your favorite movie, the dreamy one that makes you melt a bit inside, do you ever stop to think of them as an imperfect person who is doing a job they love and perhaps has a family to go back to, a person with a childhood and a future and pain? I am perhaps the worst offender of all; I see the gorgeous and talented girl in art class, who seems perfect in every way, and I am inconceivably jealous. I wish I could be her. I see her face every day at school, and think that nothing could be wrong if I were her. I forget that she, too, has insecurities. She, too, is a person who goes through challenges every day, and maybe even sometimes wishes she were different.

Perhaps the reason for all this “forgetting” is that so many of us are so intent on ego, ego, ego. We look inward, at our pipe dreams and suffering and the desires of our souls, and if we chance to look up from the vanity of our imagined universe, we take what we see and relate it to ourselves. The sexy model on T.V. is a thing to be lusted after, the homeless man a thing to be warned against, the idealized person you barely know a thing to be aspired to. These people deserve more than that. We deserve more than that.

I wonder- is it really that bad if society makes the people in the media into “things“? It doesn’t make them less of a person, in truth. It simply alters public opinion, and since when was public opinion anything near credible? ...I don’t really know. I just wish it weren’t like this. I wish that we could all remember to look up and see the beauty in the people around us. Everyone just want to be happy, to do a litttle good in their lives, to be loved. How can anyone hope to do that if the world around them sees them as a mere object, an immobile dust moat suspended in a slice of sunlight?

WE ARE NOT THINGS. We are far too beautiful and full of love and potential to be “things.”