The Distortion of Our Self Image

Nina Sacco

We only have access to idealized versions of life. 

There is always an ideal trend you should follow, an ideal life you should have, or an ideal person you should be. You really want to be that person, because everybody else seems to fit that standard already. They’re the person who dresses in a perfectly casual but stylish way. Their makeup looks seamless on their skin and their hair has a natural wave. They’re intelligent and successful. 

When you try to look like them, you feel like you’re trying too hard. Their clothes don’t fit you the same way, their makeup looks unnatural on your face, and their hairstyle feels like a borrowed wig on you. You have the same hobbies and interests, but you are nowhere near as good as them—obviously, you don’t work half as hard as they do. You’re here scrolling through their Instagram account instead of reading the book you’ve had on your shelf for months. 

And again, you’re here, alone, not having any fun. 

I go through this mental process almost once a day at college. Everybody is becoming exactly who I want to be, and I feel like I’ll never get there. But if I speak to anybody from my hometown, the real people I know in the real world, I learn that they feel the exact same way I do—but I would never know that by looking at their life through social media. I’ve found myself getting dressed up to go out, taking a few pictures, and realizing I can replicate the fake lives of all the people I am envious of. And I still feel like shit the whole time! Over eight hundred people follow my Instagram account, meaning a majority of these people “know” me based on whatever I choose to post. Being fully aware of that, I would never post a picture I don’t look my best in. This is how everybody thinks, and we know that, but somehow we believe that everything we see is real: that these are the lives we should be living. 

I knew this was something most of my friends, and nearly everyone around me, could relate to and understand. I reached out to some of them for ideas, stories, or opinions and I got thorough responses almost immediately. When I asked for specific topics I could discuss, my friend suggested, “Social comparison being the thief of joy”. This is one of the worst issues plaguing women’s self-confidence. Comparison has had a major effect on society since the 1950s and become much worse nowadays. Social media gives us immediate access to the lives of millions of strangers. We’re not only comparing our appearances—we’re also comparing our lifestyles. 

We get a glimpse into everyone’s lives now. Though it is crafted to be the most appealing version, it focuses a lot of our attention on different aspects of female appearance. Beauty standards for women have become more unrealistic by the minute as we only see a fraction of a person’s real self. What we see online is near perfection because nobody would be willing to show their flaws; though what we consider as flaws today tend to be the normal features of a human being. The use of social media has altered the female beauty standard to such an extreme that everything is incredibly specific and always changing. It is nearly impossible to achieve this idealized perfection, so we’re constantly chasing an unattainable goal. 

Occasionally, I can feel little bits of my brain slowly rot into my cranial fluid. I am lying in my bed after school with my eyes plastered to the Instagram Explore page, my thumb moving up and down without any conscious thought. Once this happens, I cannot physically sit through any content longer than 10 seconds. Sometimes I get up and talk to my mom, a licensed psychologist and fellow woman, to tell her of my horrible brain-rotting disease. She tells me there is also a lot of good to social media as long as I limit my time and cater to the algorithm based on how it makes me feel. I have tried apps that plant trees after you stay off of your phone long enough and tried the built-in time limits for certain apps, but none of that has been enough. I see the time limit go off and I always press, “Remind me in 15 minutes.” As for the content I am being mindlessly spoon-fed, it is based on what I know I enjoy, and I have slowly started unfollowing fitness and diet accounts. 

However, the majority of our time on social media is spent on an “explore page” or “for you page”, which is a fully algorithm-based endless stream of content. This was the reason I had to delete TikTok. The majority of people who I see on social media are other girls my age. The women may just be in the background of a screen of text with a silly song, but I can still see them and almost subconsciously compare myself to them. Anyone who posts on social media checks to make sure they look the way they want, even if they aren’t the focus of the video. I have grown to understand this and I know how bad it can make me feel.  

Sometimes, I am physically unable to do anything else with my time.

Since I have become addicted to my phone, I can only really consume content that is about 10-15 seconds long. I tend to take random facts from these 15-second videos as gospel. I know TikTok and Instagram are the least credible sources out there, but there is something strangely believable about a grown woman I’ve never seen in my life telling me how my body works. At one point, a video told me that a good tip for weight loss was to not drink anything but water. Even now as I get older, I still get a weird feeling in my stomach when I choose my drink with lunch, and most of the time still opt for water. Most of my perspective on healthy eating and fitness comes from a cumulation of tips, ideas, and routines I’ve seen on social media, with maybe a bit of influence from my parents and friends. 

I don’t think I have ever truly known what my body looks like. It looks different in the mirror, in pictures, and camera angles. If those pictures were taken on my phone, I look different in the front camera and the back camera. I have come to notice and worry about every little detail of myself. I also have so much documentation of every year of my life—when I am not comparing myself to other people, I am comparing myself with my past self. There are times when it becomes obsessive. I know how I can look my best, and if I don’t look exactly like that, it feels like I am doing something wrong. I have seen so many different versions of myself it’s nearly impossible to know which one is really me. 

Edites by Justin Pello & Kate Castello