We all live on our devices now. Whether it be our iPads, smartphones or laptops, almost everywhere you go, almost everyone has their head buried in one of their digital friends. The problem with this is it is creating a disconnect from the real world in. Instead of real friends, we have Instagram followers. Instead of real emotions, we have emojis and when we feel real, actual hurt, we shut up about it and instead post pictures of ourselves ALWAYS having fun. Selfies have become so mainstream that the average person is guilty of taking hundreds of selfies a year; published and unpublished.
Today’s female population is constantly influenced by the online lives and photographs of media personalities like Kylie Jenner, Selena Gomez and makeup designer, Huda Kattan who has more Instagram followers than the former president of the United States, Barack Obama.
Scroll through the Instagram feed of any female over 13 and under 25 years old and you will no doubt see pictures of them pouting and posing wearing the most immaculate faces ever make-up you have ever seen. This is a massive difference from when I myself was 13 years old where my entire knowledge of makeup was applying powder onto my face and slapping thick, clear gloss on my lips. The 13-year-old girls of today have perfectly contoured faces, immaculately shaped eyebrows, and meticulously painted lips. These young ladies are well versed in the art of manipulating their own images on social media; putting into practice makeup techniques like baking (using a heavy layer of powder to ‘ set’ your concealer) or clown contouring which involves them painting their faces like clowns with contour and highlighter to give them a more sculpted face. These techniques are ones more commonly associated with drag queens who are popularly known for purposefully exaggerating their makeup.
The reason for all of these is probably the immense pressure women feel these days to always look their best. We are constantly bombarded with images of women on our favourite TV shows e.g. Love Island contestants who sport pillowy lips, tiny waists, perfectly arched eyebrows and ‘D’ cupped boobs. These women are presented to us as the standard of beauty that we should all aspire to. There is also a lot of value these days in how many likes or hearts our pictures online acquire. People are often judged based on whether their Instagram posts have six likes or a hundred. It is probably for these reasons that a lot of us, myself included, resort to dropping hundreds to thousands of pounds on some form of cosmetic surgery in order to always look their best in pictures online or in real life.
In the last two years, Google has seen over an 80% rise in the number of people searching for cosmetic surgery. Dr. Tijion Esho, a Newcastle-based cosmetic surgeon who is also, the resident doctor on popular E4 show Body Fixers has on average 30 daily appointments at his clinic. He says ” People aspire to look as perfect as they do after they’ve FaceTuned their pictures or with a filter over their faces. This generation of girls see themselves as avatars but they are not. They are real people”.
It is amazing the amount of time and effort spent by a lot of women before taking and posting selfies online. I spoke to several women about their make-up and selfie habits. Of all the women I spoke to, 33% of them admitted to using makeup apps to edit their selfies. 29% spent over 30 minutes applying their makeup every morning. A whopping 45% purposefully applied additional makeup before taking a selfie. Almost all of these women admitted to taking up to 10 selfies before finally deciding which one to post.
One could argue that these behaviours are a brilliant way for women today to take complete ownership of their public image but there is also the overwhelming argument that this is just a symptom of the ever-growing mass female insecurity. Leeds psychologist, Debbie Bell states ” It’s a double-edged sword. On one hand, makeup and a positive online reaction give you an instant confidence boost but it also allows you to correct parts of your anatomy that you might see as defective. Over time, that ‘ defect’ can ingrain itself into your mind and become a bigger problem”.
This rings true for a lot of women today, myself included. I’ve found myself feeling more and more uncomfortable over time at the prospect of going outside my house without my (fake) face on. I’ve noticed an alarming link to the amount of makeup I have on and the way people treat me offline and how they react to me online. As a social experiment, I went out one Saturday with ZERO makeup on, wearing a baggy hoodie and flat shoes and it was almost like I was invisible and of no consequence to people I encountered. However, on Sunday morning, I visited the same places I went to the previous day with my hair perfectly curled, my face full of makeup and on my feet, 5-inch heels and people were much nicer, friendlier and much more willing to associate with me. People made way for me to get through instead of bumping into me, the same shop attendant that served me the previous day now seemed more willing to engage in small talk and the bus drivers were generally a lot nicer. No doubt, this kind of reception is addictive.
The problem with presenting yourself always as this spotless, always put together creature, however, is that you start to feel less like yourself and more like a fraud for getting compliments for a face/body that isn’t really yours and feeling constant pressure to keep it up. There is an almost insurmountable pressure on women today to ALWAYS “give the best face” and to always look the best. It should then come as no surprise that our pouts in selfies seem to get bigger, our eyebrows more pronounced and our faces unnaturally smoother as if in competition with the other selfies on our feeds, Perhaps the answer lies in just riding out the wave in the same way super skinny bodies are no longer seen as the standard of beauty as they were 30 years ago. Or we could all just collectively ignore the insane beauty standards dumped on us by society and be perfectly comfortable in our own skin. Whichever way it goes, for me, the change couldn’t come quick enough.
SophisticateQueen 