Cosmopolitan magazine has succeeded in its endeavor to severely screw with women’s perception of themselves. The July 2003 issue currently on newsstands everywhere is a typical collection of the trashy fare Cosmo is always trying to pass off as exciting and liberating for women. I don’t see how articles titled, “Little habits that keep you from meeting Mr. Right,” or, “Sex secrets he doesn’t want to hear,” could be liberating at all. If anything, it seems they would make women feel inhibited and not free to show their real selves.

But wait, that’s the point. If women actually felt free to be themselves, there would be no market for Cosmo or any other fashion magazine because we wouldn’t want to waste our precious time and money using any of the millions of products they sell by exploiting women’s insecurities.

Out of the first 20 advertisements in this issue, approximately 15 of them are for beauty products; I’m sure this is typical of any issue of any women’s magazine. Apparently the staff at Cosmo feels I should, as a “liberated woman,” want to color my hair, cover my face with makeup and have perfect skin to make myself attractive to men. Every inch of copy supports that idea as well, giving us tips on how to improve everything about ourselves from how we can start to enjoy performing oral sex to making our lips colorful, yet kissable.

However, the most inflammatory advertisement I’ve seen in years is wisely buried in the back of the issue.

“Warning: You won’t just turn heads, you’ll break necks.”

Sounds like a fashion or makeup ad, but no — it’s advertising breast enlargement and liposuction procedures. For only $2,999 (plus a small operating room fee), I can have bigger boobs. I can even finance the surgery by paying $500 down and make “low monthly payments.” They offer a free consultation to the first 1,000 callers to the 800-number provided and, best of all, they accept all major credit cards. I can hardly wait.

Excuse me, but since when have women needed to please other people so much that anyone even thought to suggest that we change the very composition of our bodies? Accessible “perfection” surgery is the absolute last thing women need — what we do need is to wake up and realize that we are naturally perfect.

Thank God Cosmo doesn’t own me now like it does other women. When I was a teenager, I let magazines like this influence what I wanted to wear, how I wanted to look, even how I wanted to think. I thought it was cool looking at the “grown-up” magazines, and I would pin the fancy-looking ads on my wall. In those days, their word was the gospel. I thought that if I were to be sexy, I would have to look like all the thin, beautiful, skin-baring models gracing their covers and pages. The desire Cosmo instilled in me to improve myself had no positive outcomes, besides that for society’s sake it made me less likely to mutiny since I was too occupied with how my hair looked.

What a crock.

Every woman is sexy because there is no other woman like them. What makes a person sexy lies in their unique characteristics — in fact, that’s what makes a person a person.

You can’t become sexy by faking your natural physical features or trying to jazz your eyes up in some dreadful attempt to make them look larger than they really are, because eventually you will have to take off the push-up bra and wash off the makeup.

Giving others a false illusion of what you look like also gives them misperceptions about who you are, and I can tell you from experience that people find it much more comforting if what they are touching and seeing is real.

I am not ashamed of how I look because this is who I am, and if you don’t like it, that’s tough. If I didn’t have so-called “fat thighs” or almost-translucent skin, I wouldn’t be myself anymore. So what if I’m not perfect by society’s standards? I truly enjoy looking in the mirror and seeing my own face staring back at me. At least I know what I’m looking at isn’t some half-ass attempt to cover my natural beauty.

It all comes down to the confidence you have in yourself and your own unique attractiveness. No one else has the same curve of the thigh, the same voice, the same laugh, or the same gestures as you do. It doesn’t matter if you have small boobs or a huge butt, because who can judge what is truly attractive? Cosmopolitan? I don’t think so. To them, being attractive means looking just like everyone else. Women need to break free of the Cosmo mold and hold others’ perceptions of their looks in less regard.