https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM4Xe6Dlp0Y

In The Ted Talk, Looks Aren’t Everything, Believe Me I’m A Model, by Cameron Russell, the speaker talks about her experience of winning “the genetic lottery.” As a well-known model Cameron talks about her experience with modeling and people that she meets that aspire to become a model. Cameron talks about how the industry in filled with girls who won the genetic lottery at birth, and saying you want to become a model is like saying you want to win the lottery.

            She then talks about  how the models we see in magazines and in different ads, are not real people. She states how in real life she is nothing like what she portrays she is like in photographs in magazines. The models we see in magazines are a fixed image of what many people in the industry want to sell to the customers that are reading the magazine.

            Cameron later discusses how when young girls ask her how they can become a model; she simply replies with the question, “why do you want to be a model?” She tells the young girls that there are so many aspiring jobs in this world and to be a model is not something you should necessarily aspire to be because it is not a  job. She mentions that as a model she gets a lot of free stuff but not for the reasons that she would want free stuff for. She tells stories about how stores have given her free dresses and police officers have not made her pay for tickets because of her beauty. She says many people that she meets have a hard time getting past her beauty and do not try to know her on a deeper level. At runway shows while she is getting made up she will look around at the other models and witness the most self-conscience girls that exist. Models are very self-conscience because a lot of the time these girls think that all they have is their looks. She says that it is draining when people are so focused on your looks all the time.

            After watching this Ted Talk, I reflected on what Cameron said and the points that she made. I always think about how magazines portray women and how it makes young girls feel about them, but I never looked at it from the models perspective. I never looked at the bigger picture and reflected on how magazines and the media make models feel exhausted. Our standard of beauty in today’s culture is causing from frustration from not only the reader’s side but also the models’.