We are no longer in the era in which we are transitioning by the masses from magazines and newspapers to the internet and television. We are well into the era dominated by digital media. This is not to say that magazines are obsolete, however their popularity has certainly diminished significantly.  Despite what I just said, you can still go to just about any convenience store or gas station or the waiting room of your primary physician’s office and see magazines. Magazines depict several different themes, but there is one theme that overshadows all of the rest: sex appeal. By now, every company on Earth has grown wise to the fact that sex sells. You see it in nearly every magazine. Images of women with the bodies of Playboy bunnies and men with Herculean bodies plaster the covers of 9 out of 10 magazines you will see during your trip to the store. There is a plethora of reasons that we buy these magazines on a daily basis. The fact that we are attracted to the images that we see and that we are constantly looking for new and more imaginative ways to “better” ourselves are a couple of major reasons we buy these magazines. If every woman woke up tomorrow and decided that they loved their bodies just the way they are, hundreds, maybe even thousands of businesses in this country would go out of business, including magazines. These magazines prey on the insecurities of the public. We live in a society that demands perfection and so many of us let society dictate how we think and feel about ourselves. There is always something on the cover of these magazines that promises to make our lives better easily and quickly. In life, nothing worth achieving will ever come easily. This is how magazines make their money though, by presenting us with these unrealistic standards that is nearly impossible to live up to. It’s like the old cartoons when they’d tie the stick with a bone dangling from it to a dog and the dog would chase it and chase it, but could never catch it. Yet we still chase after that bone with our tongues hanging out. My advice to you is to not put any merit into the majority of what magazines show or tell you. Just sit back and marvel at the ridiculousness.