The Daily Challenge, Day Fifteen: Perfect

Perfect is one of those words that gets a really hard time. It's commonly said that that the 'definition' of perfect is having imperfections, which really renders the word meaningless. Perfection is perpetually scrutinised - it can be construed as a compliment to one person but horribly offensive to the rest of the population.

There's so many issues I could (attempt to) discuss when it comes to the notion of perfection - 'notion' being the operative word. The first image to come to mind is women's magazines. Whether it's a story about diets, skincare or a column on the next page about the perception of perfect and why we shouldn't succumb to it - we're obsessed.

More often than I notice the media portraying an idea of perfection, I hear/read people complaining debating about it. The pressure to be 'perfect' that people feel is blamed on skinny models and... well that's about it. We see this is as an attack because models are, 90% of the time, skinny and conventionally pretty. Here's a wild suggestion - can we not look at the pretty clothes that're draped over their bones and think 'this would look good on me', turn the page and get on with our lives? We can only be a perfect version of ourselves, after all.

On one hand, perfection is seen as this unobtainable idea that women resent. On the other, it's something we're all kind of obsessed about. Nobody's perfect, everybody's perfect, I've lost interest in the word. Take a look at this blog post, for example. It's far from perfect, but it is perfectly nonsensical.

As I write this, I happen to be listening to the late and great Gary Moore. Coincidentally, he's pretty much my summary of perfection. After all, if we've all got our own definition of perfect nailed,that's all that matters - even if we don't find it in ourselves.