We’ve all heard the stories, seen the news flashes on TV, the headlines in the newspaper and even the gossip on the radio. The photos of poor girls who even commit suicide because they felt like they couldn’t fit in are everywhere. The pressure that society puts on women to be so perfectly pretty suffocates us.

A few months ago, a young woman took a completely natural photo of herself and sent it out to the rest of the world. She then asked all the countries worldwide to “make her pretty”. Each country came up with a bunch of photos edited in their own ways and then voted a winner. They then sent them to her and she made a video on Youtube to show her experiment. Most of the photos she found were drastically edited and while the people from that country may found them to be pretty, she on the other hand did not.

To watch it yourself go to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RT9FmDBrewA. Her investigation showed the amazing differences between an opinion of pretty on one side of the world with another. This video also makes you realise that there isn’t one single perception of pretty, but it instead all depends on what one person sees through their eyes.

But what is the real meaning of this word? In magazines and television programmes, prettiness in girls is seen as very important and is often over-rated. The media today is based on all these perfect relationships and we hardly ever see anything about celebrities without all the make-up they wear. Everything is so superficial and we are introducing the future generation to the wrong things about the world. It’s not about being pretty, it’s about having inner beauty and respecting one another. After all, we are all the same in the end.

The real message we should be giving out is not to be pretty, it is to be yourself.