We as a society love to place blame on anyone but ourselves.
Just look at what happened this week on the bachelorette…
.. if you haven’t seen it yet honestly just keep reading because you either weren’t going to watch it anyway or TikTok has spoiled it for you.
First and foremost I’d like to preface that I in no way think Bachelor nation is truly a good way for someone to find love, honestly I just find it to be addictive (somewhat trashy, depending on the season) reality TV. Not to say it’s not possible, people have found love in worse settings, I know too many people who have met on the sticky dance floor of a frat basement and are still together.
When it comes to social media none of us are perfect. I personally believe there’s an epidemic of fake serotonin plaguing our feeds. I’ve seen people post pictures from a vacation where they stayed inside and cried for the majority of the time and their caption is, “never want to leave insert sparkle emoji”. Like I get you want to share a beautiful place, but also (and maybe this is me thinking too deeply into it) your social media in a way is an extension of yourself. Not saying people should judge you fully based off of it, but there are certain reasonable assumptions you can make. If someone just posted they saw Kenny Chesney, they probably like country OR on a different spectrum if you saw someone just went skydiving you can chalk up pretty quick that they might just be a tad ‘adventurous’.
***or they’re just rich**
My point is social media is not (in my opinion) to be something that should be taken so seriously. In my mind I view my own social media as a scrapbook of my life, I used to post a lot of selfie type pictures on my feed, and now I stick more to my adventures and accomplishments because that’s what I’m going to want to look back at. Now don’t get me wrong I love to throw a picture of myself on my story and throw some indie folk song on in the background because I like the vibe and think it looks nice, so I’m not trying to act like I in no way fall into my own vanity. Honestly in some ways I feel like certain people need to more because they don’t love themselves enough.
What I view differently is when we’re posting a photo in order to ‘get likes’ or any form of validation from outside sources. When I post a picture of myself it is a form of INTERNAL validation.
So basically I’m like, “Lauren, you’re hot, the people deserve to see this”. Maybe that makes me conceited, but I am proud to have that mindset because for YEARS of my younger life I would cry about what I looked like and perceived myself as less than, and I will never go back to that.
Now it’s totally normal to have days where you’re off, maybe you feel extra bloated or there’s a particularly noticeable pimple right between your eyebrows, and that’s OKAY. We’re human. I myself have been getting over a nasty breakout of poison ivy that somehow managed to plant itself from my chin to my upper lip.
My mom said, “at least it’s not on your ass” well Soph, I would much rather have had it on my ass for your information.
So we all have our shit.
I’ll take a moment to acknowledge another one of my own vices. I have noticed that I can be a bit of a bully towards men I don’t know, as well as men I know but at this point they’ve learned to live with it.
A man recently told me that he could tell I was actually very sweet under my tough exterior, I told him to fuck off… and then wound up in his condo forty minutes later #whoops
The thing is, he wasn’t all that wrong.
I don’t think it’s wrong or any less of someone to accept help from someone of the opposite sex. But that has always been hard for me because I want to come across as a strong, independent woman. Which I absolutely am. But a rattlesnake also doesn’t need to strike for us to know it’s poisonous.
So in that way I can have semi-toxic behaviors (which I acknowledge and am actively working through) towards men I don’t know. I think over time I have experienced both first and second hand how less than certain men view women. Hell, if we had an extra appendage I’ve heard enough to hear it third hand. Now I know it’s not healthy to bring past experiences fully into new ones when judging someone you don’t know. Just think about someone entering into a new relationship that has been cheated on in the past - they may come into it feeling a lot of distrust towards their new partner, despite their partner not doing anything to deserve any level of doubt in the partnership.
We love to say how social media is ruining kids and how we as people view ourselves and others, but the truth is websites like pornhub and tabloids were doing that long before Instagram (and yes social media is a catalyst of the evolution of the internet and technology, but that’s not the point).
When instagram first was introduced to us it was filled with heavily filtered vignette photos of what we ate for lunch with a #foodie and some kind’ve emoticon to complete the post. Other than that it was really just the occasional duckface and peace sign that made their debut in our feed.
That being said it is not what you’re posting that truly matters, it’s the why. If you’re posting half naked photos because OnlyFans is your main source of income, you go girl (or boy), get your bag. Where I find the issue is when you’re posting those photos in hopes someone in particular is going to comment or their name will pop up on your phone.
A parallel can be made to many things in life. A bow and arrow sitting on a counter do no harm, but the second you pick it up and point it towards someone it becomes a weapon of destruction.
It is all about how we use the tools we have in front of us, and I think social media is no different.
For me I used to use social media in a toxic way (towards myself). I shrunk my waist, smoothed my acne and filtered that sh!t like my life depended on it. I remember there was an era where you always had to ask a person if it was okay to post a photo that had them in it, and not because the contents were provocative, but rather to make sure they liked what they looked like. Now I think it’s different if a person doesn’t want a picture posted because they’re sneezing or if they think their thighs look ‘fat’ (which I’d also like to point out is technically ‘in’ right now).
Want to state again that everything in here is my OPINION. God knows I can be wrong, sometimes more often than I’d like to admit.
A habit that has been healthy for me is when someone takes a photo of either just me or me and friends, if they ask me to look at it and see if I want more I simply respond, “No I’m sure it’s good and it’s what I look like”.
Because it is!!!
Don’t get me wrong there are very unflattering angles out there for everyone (well probably not Sydney Sweeney). But there is no need to be disheartened when you don’t look exactly what you thought you were going to look like in a photo.
I have seen probably hundreds of ‘golden hour’ photos on my feed throughout the years, but you bet your sweet a$$ that there has never once been a time where a photo was taken of me in the ___ of the suns rays where I didn’t look like I needed to shit myself.
I used to chalk that up to me being ugly, and that only pretty girls could do golden hour.
Then I woke the f*ck up.
I don’t know how many times I’ve gone and taken pictures with female friends/family/etc. and heard comments about how big their arms looked or fill in the blank of any self deprecating thought you can think about yourself and it’s there.
Scrolling through social media seeing these bodies and wondering why yours doesn’t look like that? You want a better perception of an actual ‘bikini body’ go to the goddamn beach. Of course when you are following swim suit models they are going to look a certain way.
THAT IS WHAT THEY DO FOR A LIVING - THEY GET PAID TO LOOK GOOD IN A BIKINI.
And that’s not to say their body is wrong, but any body that fits that mold also isn’t wrong. All bodies are bikini bodies. In my book my biggest concern is just that as long as you are a healthy person you have nothing to worry about. You want to tone your thighs more? Great! Do that if it’s what YOU want, but don’t do it because People Magazine thinks that’s what you need to do before you can walk onto the beach.
About two years ago I personally went through the people I follow on social media and deleted anyone I would compare myself to in an unhealthy way. To be honest this included some people I knew (not close friends).
I started filling my feed with content that is more aligned with what I value in my own life and the algorithm rewarded me for it. So now instead of countless photos of size 0 females (which I will never be and that doesn’t bother me one bit) I am shown hiking content, recipes and Joe Burrow apparently (I hate football so AI probably hears my best friend Emily talking about him).
Also I took sometime to see what my Instagram FYP looks like and the fact that Glen Powell was included >>
Honestly surprised there aren’t more dogs, but you win some you lose some.
I do think there have recently been more strides to make social media more real in ways with the whole concept of ‘photo dumps’ where it seems to be less concentrated on photos of the person themselves and more the things they did - which to me feels more authentic.
Like you were in aruba?? Show me a monkey not your tits in front of a palm tree.
(no judgement if you want to flex on us like that, I just like it coming from a genuine place)
***won’t pretend like I haven’t also participated in this trend
***Also I don’t actually know if there are monkeys in Aruba, or where Aruba is, it just felt right
I don’t know if this helped anyone but I just hope we all can take a moment to acknowledge that social media really is not that deep, have fun with it.
Love you all and appreciate your time.
Xoxo Mild Girl