"We are Lost somewhere between Ideal and Real"

In Jean Baudrillard's article "Simulacra and Simulations" he discusses the way in which our world has lost both it's sense of reality and it's sense of the abstract. He explains that in present day we have not only lost track of reality but, we have also lost track of the "magic of the concept" or "the ideal." Unfortunately however, Baudrillard goes on to say that both the "real" and the "abstract" have in recent years been replaced by what he describes as the "hyperreal." The "hyperreal" refers to all that is produced by complete simulation or the one-dimensional world that no longer has an "ideal" or a "real," but rather a system of "substituting signs."

In many ways I agree with Baudrillard's concept, I feel that we have all been born into a world that does not encourage or allow for an "ideal" or a "real." Instead, I believe that we have been born into a world that allows us only to "substitute signs" in order to become a product of the simulation of culture. Although, in the photoshopped images below the subjects are trying to appear "ideal" or "perfect," they are not, simply because we are all striving for the same image. We are all trying to appear the same using the same method, the "substitution of signs." Therefore, through this simulation the line dividing that which is "ideal" and that which is "real" is lost.