You may recognize her from Instagram, or just off sites such as Elite Daily the last week, but what we should all remember her for, is the model who changed the game.
Recently, Australian model Essena O'Neill has made headlines everywhere for deleting her social media accounts off sites such as Tumblr and Snapchat, and for changing the captions on each of her Instagram photos to reveal the truth behind each image and the lengths she went through to get them. She mentions that she was paid for the majority of them and that each image was very well thought out and posed. As these various articles recognize her for her ambition to reveal the truth behind her photos, no one has seemed to take it a step further and realize that O'Neill is acknowledging something much more serious than how fake each photo is. She admits that social media makes even her, the model behind the photos, depressed and insecure.
O'Neill starts off by saying that she was only twelve years old when she became obsessed with the social media craze. She said she felt worthless and envied the girls on Instagram with countless followers who appeared to be living beautiful lives. She didn't realize the truth until she became one of them just four years later. At just sixteen years old, Essena O'Neill was offered money to promote a bikini brand. From there on she realized she could make a living simply off of charging companies to promote their brands, and so she did just that until about a year ago, at eighteen, when she realized how unjust it was to influence people to blindly buy products based off of her judgement alone. "If it is universally fair and just, why do majority of influencers hide the fact that they are producing an advertisement? Why not just say the amount of money influencing the decision to promote a certain person, product or service?" O'Neill writes on her blog. She goes on to say that if people knew it was an advertisement, they would no longer trust her judgement or buy the product, therefore the company would no longer pay her.
What she's trying to say though goes way farther than how each image was just a paid advertisement to promote a product. Essena O'Neill admits that everyone, especially the models who appear to "have it all", is emotionally affected by the social media craze. "At twelve I told myself I would be of value, the more views I got on YouTube," she says in her video. How horribly sad this is and yet here we are subconsciously checking how many followers we have on Instagram and getting excited when it hits a new 100s mark. O'Neill said at twelve years old she would google model waist and arm sizes, measure herself, and compare, thinking if she could be like them then she would be beautiful and worthy. "I 'had it all' and I was miserable because when you let yourself be defined by numbers, you let yourself be defined by something that is not pure, that is not real, and that is not love". No matter how much we deny it, social media has become nothing more than a numbers game. We check our Instagram followers, how many people viewed our Snapchat stories and how many people favorite our tweets.
I remember being fifteen years old and getting excited because I had reached 35 likes on something I posted on Instagram. Here I am almost five years later, pretending I don't care about my likes or followers, yet proud that today I have 813 people following my account. What is there to be proud of? The only difference though is I am not basing my worth off my likes or views, but there are so many girls and even boys out there that really care even when they don't want to. I see my thirteen year old sister already falling into the pattern, following countless model accounts, trying to recreate those fake poses with her friends, obsessing over how many people like and comment on it. My sister is gorgeous and could easily become one of those models, but if her self confidence and self worth is based off numbers, rather than the love and support she receives from her family and friends, that would break my heart.
O'Neill says in her video, "I've met people that are far more successful than I am and they're just as miserable and lonely and scared and lost". She begins to get emotional in her video and advocates that "you don't need to prove your life on Instagram for it to be a good life. You don't have to prove your body for you to feel beautiful". O'Neill asks us to at least be aware by asking ourselves "what is their intention behind the photo?". However, we need to be aware of our own posts too. What are we trying to prove to our friends and to ourselves? Are we really defining our self-worth by a number?
In her video O'Neill says, "I let numbers define me at twelve and that stopped me from becoming the person that I am and that I should be". We may be consciously aware when photos seem fake or posed or like advertisements, but think about your little sister/brother. What are they thinking when they see these photos? What is their intention behind the photos they post on their accounts? My younger sister has already fallen victim to the generation-Y social media craze. She already asks my opinions on which photo I think looks better and asks to use my Canon to take posed pictures of herself and her friends all the time. Our siblings may be to young to fully grasp and understand how consuming the social media world is, but it is our jobs as their older sisters and brothers to love and support them unconditionally and to teach them to love themselves regardless of their number of followers.
Essena O'Neill made a beautiful point when she wrote "you can't grow in a numbing, over sexualized, gossip filled, aesthetic based and superficial world". She wanted to be a game changer, to make an impact on the young and to teach them not to follow in her past footsteps. While it may feel like we're too far invested into our online lives, it is our job to teach the younger generations to never become consumed by it all. Teach them to love themselves, to post things because it makes them happy or is of something they love, not because it is something they have to prove. That being said, I encourage you to evaluate your life and what your happiness is based off of. Are you trying to prove yourself?
