Her hair flowed through the looming night air as she danced, her smile wide and bright, reaching toward the sky. Her clothes moved in perfect rhythm with her body, each motion exuding freedom and joy. It was as if she had no worries, no pain, only laughter and light. She looked free.
But was she?
I watched her through the screen of our television, imagining a life as perfect as hers. She was everything I aspired to be beautiful, confident, famous. I thought she had it all: the love of people, a life of glamour, and the privilege of being adored. And in the quiet of our living room, I whispered to myself, I want to be just like her.
The entertainment industry has always been viewed as a golden ticket, a business built on dreams, where ordinary lives are transformed overnight. It is where rags can become riches, and pain can be masked by fame. For many people born into hardship, it feels like the only escape. In a study by Leonid E. Grinin from the Volgograd Center for Social Research, the entertainment industry is described as a modern resource that symbolizes power and wealth, something everyone yearns for. And I was no exception. I wanted to be part of that world, not for vanity, but for survival. I wanted to uplift my family from poverty and believed fame could be the bridge.
So I worked hard. But wanting to be in the industry meant more than just ambition. It meant becoming someone else. The moment I stepped into that world, I realized talent wasn’t enough. You had to be beautiful by their standards. You had to be light-skinned, slim, flawless. It didn’t matter how intelligent or skilled you were; if you weren’t visually pleasing, you were invisible.
I started using skin-whitening products, ones endorsed by the girl on the screen. Even though they left my skin burning and irritated, I pushed through the pain. I copied the way she dressed, even if it made me uncomfortable, believing that confidence was sewn into every revealing piece of fabric. I mimicked her smile, her walk, her voice. Little by little, I erased myself.
It wasn’t just me. Mandy Merck once wrote about how young people, desperate to match the glow of their idols, imitate their fashion, speech, even undergo surgeries to resemble them. We start measuring our worth by how closely we resemble these images. We wish for longer noses, larger eyes, fairer skin. We internalize the belief that only by becoming them can we be loved, valued, accepted.
I remember the day I asked my mother if I could change my nose. Her anger was instant, and her voice was sharp, “You’re already beautiful.” Maybe I was, in her eyes. But society didn’t see me the same way. To them, I was not beautiful. I didn’t look like the girl on the screen. I didn’t match the standard.
I realized the cost of this obsession when I ended up in a hospital, my skin swollen and red from an allergic reaction to cheap makeup I used to hide my imperfections. I stared at myself in the mirror, wondering, Did my idol go through this? Did she suffer for beauty, too? Or was perfection just handed to her while I had to bleed for it?
But perfection is a facade.
Later, I found out that the girl I once idolized suffered from severe anxiety and depression. She had to force herself out of bed, day after day, just to show up and smile. She revealed how, behind the lights and cameras, she was harassed, objectified, and manipulated. Men she trusted violated that trust. Strangers on the streets followed her with lewd intentions. And yet, she kept going because the world demanded her smile, her beauty, her body.
Beyond the screen are women just like her, women like me, who are suffering silently. Women who entered the industry full of hope, only to discover exploitation behind every opportunity. Grinin was right when he said celebrities have become modern resources. But we’re not resources, we’re people. The industry glamorizes success but hides the cost: the dignity lost, the trauma endured.
Mandy Merck elaborated on the dark side of the entertainment world. While it claims to promote beauty and confidence, it instead breeds insecurity. The standard it sets is unreachable, even for the very people who set it. The girl I once admired confessed to undergoing multiple surgeries, trying to become what the world wanted her to be. Not loved, lusted after. Not admired, consumed.
Her story reminded me of Alyssa Milano, who revealed she had been sexually harassed by a director, a truth echoed by thousands of women in the industry. According to Embrahim and Liu (2021), Milano’s experience is not unique. Behind the glamour are millions of women who cry themselves to sleep, begging for a life less painful, while we, the audience, envy their illusion.
I used to think I wanted that life. But that dream turned into a nightmare.
It happened.
And now, my hair flowed through the looming night air as I danced, my smile wide and bright, reaching toward the sky. My clothes moved in perfect rhythm with my body, each motion exuding freedom and joy. It was as if I had no worries, no pain, only laughter and light. I looked free.
But I am not free.
I became the woman I once idolized. The woman who was praised on camera but broken behind it. The woman who turned her pain into a performance. I am the woman who became a prisoner behind the screen. I know what it feels like to be objectified, to feel like you’re never enough, to want to claw your way out of a system that keeps asking you to smile while it breaks you.
And as I continue to dance beneath the cold night sky, I pray that no other girl walks this same path. I pray no woman is ever made to believe that her worth lies in her appearance, or that success must come at the price of her soul. Because everything I went through and everything I lost were never worth the applause. It was and will never be entertaining.
By: Ceejay R. Torres
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