Today millions of people think nothing about dropping ten dollars to see a movie and be entertained. The days of reading a good book or staying home with the kids are dead and gone. They hear some hype about a movie and, like a herd of cattle, rush off to check out the movie. No one questions Hollywood about the movies they put out or about their teachings that are clearly present in each and every movie they produce.

The movie industry earns billions of dollars that is your hard-earned money, by the way, and has grown to super power status. Movie stars are worshipped and praised for being actors and for no other reason. Actors have done nothing special to earn our worship of them but have pretended to be someone special grabbing the glory that they do not deserve. Star struck people see an actor in a role and begin to idolize them because of the part the actor is playing. They do not realize or perhaps forget that the actor has done nothing but pretend to be another person who has achieved something great. Hollywood teaches that the glitter and glamour is far more important then the deed.

A closer look at Hollywood unveils a side of darkness that should have been exposed for all to see. In just about every movie the star must be young and bone thin. Sex appeal must ooze from them at all times. Their bodies must be frail with faces that have been made perfect by plastic surgery. Even their teeth are pure white and as straight and perfect as can be. Average people see the perfect movie star and dream about being them. Young girls starve themselves in order to gain the movie star body. Many start to feel as if they are ugly because they don’t measure up to the movie stars.

Women skip meals in order to say I am a size two or less. Anyone over a size two is considered fat. Many women are anorexic today because Hollywood has taught through their movies that to be accepted you most be skinny and that being frail and even sickly looking is now beautiful and to be desired. Overweight people and, yes, even average bodies are to be looked down upon and never accepted.

According to the Renfrew Center Foundation it is estimated that five million people in America suffer from an eating disorder. ABC News in June 2005 stated that adult anorexia is on the rise. Experts believe more then ten percent of anorexics are over forty as women deal with film and television actress who remain rail thin as they age. This teaching is dangerous and causing many health problems for a lot of people.

The lifestyle of the movie stars leave us drooling and, yes, wondering why them and not me. Many struggle to put food on the table and pay their rent and yet the movie stars have money to burn. We are being shown the mansions costing millions of dollars as well as expensive cars that, let's face it, none of us will ever partake in. The normal human being comes away feeling as if they some how have been cheated or passed over as they struggle to keep the modest home and car that they work hard to maintain.

The movie star, with their designer dresses and bling, as it is called, drips off the movie stars, while others look and are reminded they will never taste a bit of it. The movie stars journey to one place and then another, places we have all dreamed about seeing but many could never afford to travel, so it remains just a dream to us. Hollywood teaches that what you own and your bank account determines your worth and value.

Hollywood has clearly sent the message that youth is great but older really stinks. Sure, they have a few older actors here and there but it's mostly filled with the youth of Hollywood. In Peter Bowes' 'Growing old in Hollywood' BBC news article he says, Hollywood has a huge downer on women over forty. Hollywood is littered with tales of ageing starlets who see their careers take a nosedive after forty.

The older actors who at one time were the younger actors compete with the younger ones but mostly just fade a way and out of the memory of Hollywood. In our world as we get older we are being pushed aside to make room for the fresh young bodies who are suppose to be able to contribute more and better then the older people. In many ways Hollywood shows us that only youth has anything real to offer and to cast off the older person as if they could never measure up.

Hollywood is a fake place where fake people live. It’s not real in any way. Strip away the money and power and the praise and worship and you view people just plain people. Hollywood with all its glamour holds very little and offers even less. Their movies take most of us places we should never go. They cram movies full of what they insist we all want to see. On that point they might we right.

Why else are we paying so much to see their movies? The truth might well be that actors look for escape in pretending to be someone else and we all watch there movies in order to escape our daily lives that are full of struggles. A couple of hours in TV land or out to see a movie gives us relief from our own lives. Hollywood perhaps without knowing it has taken us all on a journey into the unreal making it impossible to except reality without a script to follow.

Judy Eichstedt
7144 east Newton Street
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74115
Co-author of www.wearysouls.com