Trigger Warning: suicide, eating disorders
Social media negatively affects our mental health as it creates a false sense of reality that we visit daily. Only showing the best angles of both our faces and our lives is a recipe for toxicity, and yet so many of us eat it up. Social media has driven body expectations and standards much too far, and the implications are deeper than just insecurity.Â
I fear for the generations after me. On social media, most influencers are wearing makeup, but also editing their photos to have tiny noses and supersized lips. They are editing their faces to the point of being unrecognizable. I have never edited my photos to change my face or body, simply because I don’t think it is necessary to hide every little imperfection. So I don’t.
The beauty ideal went from being skinny, to being skinny only in highly specific areas. A woman should have thin arms, thin legs, and a tiny waist (who needs internal organs anyway?!) , yet wide hips and of course, a big butt. Clear skin with no pores or blemishes are also necessary. As are large eyes, small nose, huge lips, and hollowed out cheekbones. I’ve never even met someone who looks like that. Women spend large sums of money on makeup, skincare, and body modifications in an attempt to attain an unattainable version of themselves. Plastic surgery seems like a viable option as it would be the only way to fulfill all of these simultaneous ideals for the vast majority of women. But when a woman does get plastic surgery, society says she is now undesirable because she is not “natural.” She is considered plastic.
We are trained to be ashamed of an ever-growing list of things about our bodies. This is one reason why so many girls and women suffer from body dysmorphia, eating disorders, depression and anxiety. Social media does not help this issue. Despite the growing movement of body positivity and self-love, the suffocating and ubiquitous pressure of perfection remains at the forefront.
I also think that social media is encouraging us to cater to male fantasies, an idea that Margaret Atwood expressed so eloquently. “Male fantasies, male fantasies, is everything run by male fantasies?” she said. “Up on a pedestal or down on your knees, it’s all a male fantasy: that you’re strong enough to take what they dish out, or else too weak to do anything about it. Even pretending you aren’t catering to male fantasies is a male fantasy: pretending you’re unseen, pretending you have a life of your own, that you can wash your feet and comb your hair unconscious of the ever-present watcher peering through the keyhole, peering through the keyhole in your own head, if nowhere else. You are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyeur.”
Instagram has the potential to be such a fun, authentic place if more users posted casually. But I will be the first to say it is not an easy undertaking. Instagram makes me a little nervous. It feels like I am putting up a picture in a gallery for people to walk by and view at their leisure, liking it or disliking it. But if we just posted casually, Instagram would become online scrapbooks that are more personal, interesting, funny, and most importantly, more in touch with reality.Â
The only partial solution I see is limiting time on social media or deleting it altogether to try and banish this false reality that has been fed to our brains.
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