Screw Unicorns! I'm a Rhino!

Okay, the fact is everyone loves the internet. It's a thing a lot of people would give up their right foot to spend time on simply because they can do more things without a foot and with the internet than they can with a foot and without the internet. (Yay! Technology!) Anyways there's a meme going around of a rhino that wants to be a unicorn. It looks a lot like this.

I'd seen it a few times and even thought it was cute at first. Then this morning something about this illustration hit me. It's glorifies negative body image. It doesn't matter how often that little rhino runs on the treadmill, nothing short of an encounter with a genie is going to turn him into a unicorn.

I get that the image is supposed to be cute, but when you think about it more than the passing Facebook news scroll, you realize how messed up it really is. (Either that or just suddenly have excessive amounts of free time like me.) In our society there is constantly a lot of talk about body image and how media helps to either make it better or worse. That rhino pictured above has grown up in a society where unicorns are the most beautiful and majestic mythical creatures out there and everyone should strive to be one. That's not unlike our society where supermodels combine with photoshop to make one mythical Frankenstein's Monster of a Barbie Doll. 

As of late there are a lot of things like this going around.

They use the unicorn to represent individuality, by putting everyone in a perfect unicorn costume and pretending everyone eats butterflies and poops rainbows. (Yes, that was a Horten Hears a Who Reference.) The problem is being yourself doesn't lead you down the path to mythical perfection. It leads you down a path where you scrape your knees, collect a few scars, and by the end of the day have some badass stories to tell or at the very least an indepth knowledge of Grey's Anatomy thanks to Netflix.

Being yourself is about being yourself. It's not about attaining some level of awesome that doesn't exist like a unicorn. It's about just being a level of awesome that's imperfect, scraped up a bit, and actually exists like a rhino. So screw being a unicorn. I'm a rhino! I will rock my pale tubby tummy in a bikini even if it blinds the entire beach because it's far more comfortable than farting glitter and pretending my Edward Cullen paleness sparkles without it. (Yes I did just imply the Edward Cullen farts glitter.)