Everything Is Real, But It's Also Just As Fake: Pattern Recognition

So this is it, the last blog post. I just want to say it has been a real pleasure writing this and for all of your great comments.

The other day in class a conversation about body image was brought up and it struck a never with a few of the female students in the class. This heated debate was in regards to the passage in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition where Parkaboy describes how he and his friend, Musashi, transformed the body image of Judy into "Keiko" using Photoshop. "What we did was up the wattage for Taki, aiming to maximize libidinal disturbance, we shot this long tall Judy and reduced her by at least a third, in Photoshop. Cut 'n' pasted her into Musashi's kid sister's dorm room at Cal. Darryl did the costuming himself, and then we tried enlarging her eyes a few clicks. That made all the difference. Judy’s epicanthic folds are long gone, the way of the modest bust nature intended for her. . . and the resulting big round eyes were pure Anime magic. This is the girl Taki's been looking for all his life, even though nature's never made one, and he'll know that as soon as he lays eyes on this image." (PR, 129.)  

Everything that was said in class by the women in class I agree with 150%. I cannot even imagine how hard things are for women this day in age with our hyper sexualized American culture. That video we watched of the model being transformed in Photoshop like what was described in William Gibson's novel really freaked me out. Seeing how fake everything is that we see is strange to process. This is real life, but everything we see on a daily basis has been distorted and changed so much that it's fake. It really is like we are living in The Matrix. There is no real anymore, only what companies and big business perceive to be real juding on what they think men and women want. I know this distortion of women happens a million times more then men, but I still feel like there is a standard a lot of women hold on men to look like. I mean go to a American Eagle or Hollister and look at the 10 foot pictures of the guys on the wall, a ripped 12 pack abs, huge muscles, super good looking. At least for me I know it sucks to see things like this, to see this is what people see as "attractive". Same goes for movie stars. OMG RYN GOSLING AND CHANNING TATUM ARE SO HOT. Where's the love for the Steve Buscemi's of the world? 

                                                                           
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Again, let me reiterate, this is still a way worse problem for women in America. I don't know how to change this because this is the way society has been moving in for a long time now. It's hard to change the ways of thinking of million's of people, especially when they see these fake images that  are plastered on every billboard, clothing store, magazine, film, ect. in America. I wish things were different and I wish I was in Zion instead of The Matrix, but this is the world we live in. As long as there are companies around to tell us how to think and manipulate our minds we will continue to be sheep and go along with the flow. Fake is the new real.