Content warning: this article contains mentions of disordered eating and body image issues.
At what point did we turn our insecurities into hashtags?
In the last decade, a dangerous trend has been on the rise, and with unrestricted access to social media, most of the public is at risk of exposure. If you have been active online in the last few years, you have likely come into some contact with body-checking, unhealthy dieting advice, or feature over-analysis content on social media. Applications such as Tumblr, Instagram, and TikTok have given users a platform to curate different appearance-based niches, popularize beauty fads, and encourage heightened attention to body types. The popularity of this genre of content has desensitized the general public to posts that are harmful to self-development. Many users, especially young women and girls, have begun to view this serious and triggering content as “thinspiration,” subconsciously absorbing and amalgamating other peoples’ thoughts of what our bodies should look like.
Having spent a considerable amount of time on TikTok in the last few months, I have witnessed a few different trends, all connected to the labeling of bodily features and the promotion of makeup products. An example of this was a popular TikTok trend that categorized certain facial “archetypes” to different animals. According to the trend, the way your features sit on your face contributes to your animal type, such as being “rat-pretty” or “frog-pretty.” Each animal type is characterized by the different spacing of the eyes, nose, and teeth, often using celebrity photos as examples. In many of these videos, makeup products are recommended to neutralize the appearance of these features. It seems relatively harmless, right?Â
The issue with this trend— and others like it —is that it perpetuates the idea that we constantly have something to improve on. This is not a new tactic for the beauty industry either. The entire beauty-fashion market is specifically designed to make you think harder about your looks than you need to, and it may even convince you that there is something that needs to be altered, removed, or enhanced when there is not.
Women are often the victims of this intense marketing, and it doesn’t stop at facial beauty and makeup. Another trend I recently saw on TikTok was “legging legs,” i.e., having legs that can “pull off” leggings. Within this trend is often footage of thigh gaps— a significant amount of space between the thighs that was intensely popularized during the birth of social media and has remained in circulation since.
In recent years, social media platforms have not eradicated these trends; they have simply rebranded. Though Instagram and most other social media platforms have banned hashtags directly related to negative self-image, many unhealthy trends remain under different names, thinly veiled as forms of self-help, health, and beauty. The most significant issue with these dangers is that social media algorithms can make these posts virtually inescapable. Instagram’s algorithm hosts a feature for measuring engagement known as “dwell time,” which records how long you stay on a post, regardless of whether you have engaged with it or not. Just by pausing your scrolling to look, the algorithm adjusts to show you similar content, and you become trapped in a cycle of exposure.Â
After seeing so much of this type of content, I found myself wondering: What type of “animal pretty” am I? Am I a rabbit? A frog? A rat? What do my legs look like in leggings? Why am I watching a video of what a model eats in a day? Repeated exposure to such elements has slowly altered my own self-perception. I have become more cognizant of the way I am perceived by others— a shared experience of many women “trapped” in the confines of their phones. While there has always been societal pressure that stresses a woman’s physical appearance, women used to be able to put down beauty magazines or turn off product commercials. This is no longer an option. Today, we have less autonomy over what our phones show us than we think we do.
To any reader struggling with self-perception due to the Internet: be conscious of what you consume when you open your apps. Block what makes you feel uncomfortable or unhealthy. Be aware of posts that glamorize disordered eating and unrealistic beauty standards that may slip into your feed. If they do enter your feed, do your best to mentally devalue them. You are more than your appearance, more than your body, and more than your clothes and makeup.Â