In today’s increasingly digital society, the rise of social media has affected almost every facet of human life and society. Everyone can be found with the click of a button on various apps, and lives are amounted to a profile page of perfect pictures. Social media, while contributing much to society in terms of communication, economics, and information sharing, has also come with consequences to mental health, self image, and even gender representation.
As a teenage girl on social media, I have grown up with these apps for a good majority of my life. I have had profiles since I was in middle school, and have followed and watched as they expanded and grew. I have grown along with them. I have seen that women are expected to be perfect on these apps: perfect bodies, perfect outfits, perfect face, perfect life. And it has created a pressure in me like no other. I could never be these women, yet I was constantly being told that I had to be in order to be accepted.
“Skinny” teas and waist trainers and diet pills and hoards of makeup and tiny dresses have all been thrown in my face while I still had braces on. I was constantly being promoted products to make me more beautiful by the beautiful girls themselves, and this led to an unending feeling that I should be doing more in order to be those girls. More so than with men, social media has constructed an image of the perfect woman and put on a pedestal anyone that seemingly checks off the boxes. And for those that will never be that skinny or rich or beautiful, like myself, it can seem like you are nothing.
But what I have come to realize is that this isn’t the truth. My Instagram profile is not who I really am, and these seemingly perfect models do not actually look like that. They use layers of photoshop and filters and have personal trainers and diet regimes and are paid to put forth the image of perfection. But no one is truly perfect, and I wish that these Instagram influencers could promote this idea, especially for little girls, instead of one that is a false narrative of beauty. Women are more that their waist size or follower count or likes on a picture. And I feel that this is an important issue that we must focus on going forward.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDn4tri1mPY