America's Obsession with Deception

One of my favorite Netflix documentaries is The Woman Who Wasn't There, which is the story of Tania Head (real name Alicia Esteve Head), a woman who lied about being a survivor of the World Trade Center attacks on September 11th. When I saw this documentary it intrigued and shocked me, I could not imagine how an individual could repeatedly lie about his or her life and take advantage of a terrible tragedy for attention and recognition.

After further reflection on The Woman Who Wasn't There, I began to think about the topic of deceit and realized that deception is a common trend in American media and culture. Deception is especially prominent in a physical sense. There is a common trend and use of cosmetics, diets and plastic surgery in America. All these methods are used to change one’s appearance and the truth is that an individual didn’t look like that before his or her bronzer or his or her nose job. The question is, why are we so unhappy with our real selves? Why do Americans constantly feel the need to change themselves to impress others?

American culture revolves around finding a seemingly perfect and ideal individual and following and praising their every move. Perfection is based on physical attributes that are often manufactured. In a way American media uses this “stalking” of stars to promote an ideal way of being and these ideal physical traits constantly evolve with the times. American’s alter their physical appearances just to realize that times have changed and there is one again a new person or trend to idealize. American’s have fallen into a sick cycle of never really being happy with themselves and using forms of deception like consumerism and aestheticism to cope.

Though Tania Head’s use of deception was an extreme example, the core of her story does not shy far away from the problems regarding physical deception in American culture. The dangerous use of deception to attain ideal physical traits in American culture is spiraling problem with no end reward. The Woman Who Wasn't There gets people thinking about the concepts of deception and its relation to popular culture in America. Us Americans are just a different extreme example of the use of deception in order to obtain recognition and attention.