Cosmopolitan Vs. The Beauty Myth

On the plane last weekend coming home from a school trip I was sitting next to one of my teachers reading a Cosmopolitan magazine. I tend to pick up a Cosmo whenever I travel but I don't even read half of whats actually in the magazine, I more just flip through the pages and read the few things that pop out and seem interesting. My teacher looked over and started laughing when he realized it was a Cosmo and made a sly comment. When I was done reading the Cosmo I put it away and took out the book I am now reading for my English class, The Beauty Myth. My teacher then looked over and me again, started laughing, and said "Only a teenager would go from reading a Cosmopolitan to the Beauty Myth". I had no idea what he was talking about or what he meant about that since I hadn't even opened the book yet and had absolutely no idea what it was about. Once started to read it, on the first page there was the line "Many are so ashamed to admit that such trivial concerns- to do with physical appearance, bodies, faces, hair, clothes- matter so much" (pg 9). After reading that line I knew exactly what my teacher was talking about. That line made me think of the Cosmo and I realized that that is what the entire magazine is about. The magazine has pages about fashion, make-up, hair products, sex, workout methods etc. The entire magazine is about what the book is trying to say has become so important in our society and something that a lot of people have become obsessed with such trivial things. I found it very interesting that my teacher made the comment because I would have never have put two and two together on my own, to me I just went from a little bit of entertaining light reading to something I  have to read for my English class. After getting further into the Beauty Myth it made me realize that I have become like many people who obsess and think about all the trivial things that don't really matter just because it's what I read about, talk about with friends and family, and am surrounded with. Being in high school all these little things are taken way out of proportion and become our worst enemies, unless we can get everything perfect. We can never be perfect though, so all of us are always worrying and obsessing over one little thing that in reality doesn't really matter. And to think about it we can't even do anything about half of the things we concern ourselves with no matter how much we try. It's just another stress in our life that we put on ourselves and it could easily be taken away if we took a step back and realized how unimportant everything really is.