Moving Pictures.....
Films and Television are becoming the way we define ourselves. A common international point of reference. People will often describe colleagues as looking like a character from a movie or TV, she looks like Julia Roberts in Erin Brockavich, he looks like Gene Hackman in the French Connection. We describe items, posessions, people and experiences as being like those seen in a film.
Harmless datums and comparators mostly, simply serving as descriptors we all understand. But it is going too far. People on the street view themselves in comparison with the unattainable standards set by airbrushed stars, believing that if only they could harness the same trappings of wealth or the same digitally corrected beauty that they would be happy. The narcissists in the gym that believe that inner happiness and contentment can be achieved by re-sculpting their torsos so they might emulate the youthful Schwarzenegger; the girls that believe they are fat grotesques because they do not share the Gwyneth Paltrow wispy figure; the black guys that find self definition in their pimped rap star Mercedes and the lonely Joe on the street that thinks that if he had the Ferrari and the Hollywood bank account, he would find love and contentment. Television and movies gear us to relate to superficialities and material wealth, encouraging us to compare ourselves with the bland characters of the big and small screen and the actors that play them. Shallow is now an aspirational character asset with men anxious to be judgmental and tough instead of compassionate and fair. The ideal woman has been reduced to a wisecracking sex kitten right into her sixties, rather than your mum or your grandmother. Anyone failing to meet these standards is seen as too fat, too skinny, too pale, too poor or without that movie quality.

Enough is enough. The fiction is OK, but that is all it is. Let us not compare each other with anyone, just try to be a little more understanding and a little more caring, of the people we don't know as much as of the people we do.

For the record I have the roguish charm of Han Solo, the time tempered intellect of Obi Wan Kenobi and am hung like a wookie. *

*All Star Wars characters referenced here are from the superb first three movies produced rather than the last three crap ones.

Apologies to the readership for the dearth of articles in the last week, I have been traveling and quite ill.