Cover Reveal ~ Broken Images by Rene D. Schultz

A NOTE FROM AUTHOR: Our younger generations have been pressured with an overwhelming message that achieving ‘beauty’ is mandatory in becoming successful in life, and it increases your personal value in the public and social scene. Thanks to the media, we have become accustomed to extremely rigid and uniform standards of ‘beauty.’ Seeing images of flawless, thin females everywhere makes it hard for women-or anyone-to feel good about their bodies. Our children are relentlessly encouraged and pushed by magazines, television, fashion, plastic surgeons, and peer pressure to obtain that beauty through different procedures of cosmetic surgery. Botox, Restylane, augmentation, and liposuction have become a common day occurrence amongst young people (mostly women) throughout the world. Growing up with that overwhelming message places a lot of stress on our teens through peer pressure, and has created a lot of obsessive behaviors like eating disorders (Anorexia and Bulimia) and addiction to plastic surgery (Body Dismorphic Disorder), that even the older generations have to deal with it. Older women (over 40) have an increase of stress competing with younger women, forcing them to keep up with only acceptable ‘beauty’ standards. In many parts of the world it has deeply affected any success in their social life, as well as the work environment. Many movie stars are a perfect example of this obsession to stay beautiful. Aging has become discreditable and cosmetic surgery is their only way to keep themselves marketable. The thin, athletic, sexy ideals of beauty have become the ‘new normal.’ That's frightening for the last few generations—not to mention the parents who are raising their young daughters in this environment of competition and judgment. We deserve to be really angry about the current state of affairs that has a fashion and media industry feeding us ideals that cause us to feel guilty for our hungers, obsessed with our appearance, and hating the very bodies that we need to sustain us. The only real cure for plastic surgery, and this need to be ‘beautiful,’ is for people to realize that it is not the nose, but the look in the eyes. It is not the appearance, but the accomplishments, not the outside but the inside that actually makes us all who we are. – AMEN… Broken Image is a glimpse into the world of the ‘cosmetic’ generations. Beverly Hills is the perfect example of the peer pressure of beauty…there is a lesson to be learned!

SYNOPSIS
Women are constantly pressured with the overwhelming message that achieving ‘perfect beauty’ is mandatory to be accepted and successful. Mercedes survived a childhood with a hateful and mentally ill mother who constantly called her an ‘ugly duckling.’ Now, at twenty-nine, she’s a brilliant financial icon in Beverly Hills. She knew she was not beautiful, or stunning, or even close to either. She was plain, simple, and ordinary. Not at all close to what some, even her friends, considered ‘acceptable.’ You go on a journey with Mercedes and her four friends that live in a city that judges a woman solely by her outside and not her inside. Will Mercedes face decisions that would change her life forever? Will reality raise its ugly head and teach her a lesson?