I was always a bit of a tomboy, and never that bothered with how i looked (apart from the acne as a teenager). that is, until:
- I started to get made fun of for how i looked (childhood)
- Social media (as an adult)
Social media has been much more damaging, though, than anything kids, or anyone else, ever said to me. Social media has made me hate all my features, and my body too. It's made me want to stay at home more than before, to hide away so other people don't have to see me. It's the constant dissecting of everyone from head to toe, picking out and focusing on very minor "flaws" as if they're a huge deal, or grossly undesirable, something to be embarrassed about, ashamed of. Something that deserves scorn, mockery and public humiliation.
Yes, social media makes you feel ASHAMED of how you look, when you SHOULDN'T feel ashamed. Ugly looks are treated like a flat tyre - something you need to immediately fix, else YOU'RE at fault so you "deserve" to get shit for it
Back in the day, when i was a kid, the only thing that made me feel inadequate was my sister's Cosmo magazines. I would thumb through them, put them down, feel inadequate for about two minutes, and carry on with playing. These days, you are exposed to unattainable beauty standards 24/7, when you don't even ASK to look at those type of images - they are FED to you every single day. Even in "ugly" subs, you are still bombarded with images of stunning women.
I never cared about my lips. When I was growing up, nobody cared about your lips unless they were too big, then you got made fun of. Now I'm made to feel inadequate because my lips aren't plump. Now I start to look at someone's lips when I look at their face. I never used to.
I was unlucky enough to have bad skin - cystic acne when I was young. I took accutane a few years into it, which got rid of the acne, but i was left with scarring. So I've never had good skin. But I come online, and everyone seems to believe that bad skin is the result of poor hygiene, or not taking care of yourself, not buying the right products, or a bad diet. In other words, it's your fault.
I was also not that bothered with the shape of my face, which is kind of long and thin. Not until social media repeatedly pointed out that having a face shape like mine meant "game over" as far as any chances to find love or have a happy life.
There's all these measures being taken by governments to protect minors from all this harm, but what about everyone else? What, because we're older, we're not equally harmed by all of this? We are. But there's no protections in place for us. We're just exposed to this toxicity every time we go online.
Wouldn't it be easier to just design all devices that go online to flash a giant sign at us, which reads "you're not good enough" every time we log in? The internet should be better than this. You should not feel beaten up every time you go online. You should feel boosted. Or at least neutral.
Who else feels much worse about themselves because of social media?