The funhouse mirror
Image credit: Siri Danared
Image Edit: Elsa Rosengren
You look at yourself dozens of times per day – perhaps you open your front camera by mistake, or you look in the mirror while brushing your teeth, maybe you walk by a shop window. Each time you see a different facet of yourself, nevertheless it’s still you in essence. But what about how other people see you? I imagine all of us standing in a room of mirrors, each one showcasing a different aspect of our personality. You know – you are what you eat, you are the company you keep, the school you go to, the books you read, etc. Then right above our heads stands a huge, twisted funhouse mirror, taking in all of our reality, bending it in all sorts of uncomfortable ways, and spitting out the social media version of us.
By mastering these distortions of reality, certain people in this world have made successful careers. Today we are haunted daily by thousands of unreasonably attractive faces and bodies we see online, and it comes as no surprise that not only our images are becoming distorted, but also our perceptions. This particularly came into focus for me when a male friend asked me with palpable frustration in his voice where all of these beautiful women are and why doesn’t he ever see them around. It didn’t even take a second for me to respond that they just do not exist. It wasn’t until that moment when my university-educated friend conflicted the world of social media models with reality that I realized how detrimental the whole thing had gotten. The lies of social media were so crystal clear, but I as well had been sucked in nonetheless, constantly feeling insecure, constantly on a diet, constantly editing.
Now for better or for worse, I have since become jaded enough to just roll my eyes at this, but is this the case for any teenager scrolling through their feed? In September 2021 The Wall Street Journal reported on an internal presentation at Instagram, which had me clutching my pearls in shock. According to those slides, one in five teens says that Instagram makes them feel worse about themselves. Furthermore, The Journal discovered that the research showed that, among teenage users who reported suicidal thoughts, 13% of British users and 6% of American users traced those feelings back to their usage of the app. So, who is to blame: the platform that sets the stage or the users who knowingly perform on it? No one forces you to conform to the way things are done online, you choose to do it. The Instagram research put the numbers to it, but we have always known these issues exist.
Influencers are aided in no uncertain manner by hundreds of businesses, which use the unattainable beauty standards of the day to their advantage. This is perfectly illustrated by the story of the Norwegian model Karoline Bjornelykke, who recently posted about her experience in the world of “plus-sized” modeling. In her video, she showed the padding (essentially a fat suit) she had to wear to photoshoots. This way her body would be curvy only in the right places with her face remaining nice and slim, just the way the industry likes it, thus creating a look that is impossible to attain. Other companies sell you detox teas to slim you down, unsurprisingly omitting the fact that you might also need general anesthesia to obtain that dream body.
These false promises of social media beauty have given rise to multiple accounts which have the sole purpose of finding unedited pictures of influencers and juxtaposing them to the ones they post. This is also present in the fitness world, where people create videos exposing influencers who are not “natural” despite their claims to the contrary. At first glance, it seems mean or perhaps born out of jealousy, but it has become a necessity. The hypocrisy of social media might not seem enough to justify a two-page essay, but when you add to this the fact that half of the time these people are consciously trying to sell you something to make you look like them then maybe you can understand my outrage. Airbrushed models sell you skincare, gym bros on steroids sell you protein powder all the while failing to disclose the real reason they look the way they do in their pictures. https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knows-instagram-is-toxic-for-teen-girls-company-documents-show-11631620739
At the end of the day the interplay between influencers, the businesses that pay them, and the platforms that give them prominence runs deep and creates a truly toxic environment. Harmful even. However, we, the users are not the innocents here. People online are nothing more than their following, so it is entirely up to us to fix this. Maybe going fully offline is laughably unrealistic, but next time you see someone telling you they got their borderline mythical body through a juice cleanse - unfollow them and see how that feels.. In due time, you will be able to leave the funhouse altogether.