Girls have it bad. I mean, everywhere you look there are unrealistic body images that we’re taught to compare ourselves to. I can’t be “that girl” from the Instagram account with over a million followers or on the cover of Vogue.
I’m exploring this idea in one of my first college classes that focus on media messages. I’ve learned and seen plenty of examples that have shown guys have it bad too, and I’m not discrediting their struggles with self-confidence. Society is teaching both guys and girls that it’s normal to not be happy with your body and not even that, it’s teaching us that we have to judge other people’s bodies as well.
Think about it, girls see an attractive guy in an ad or a famous Instagrammer and we want that. We don’t want to date mediocre guys, we set ourselves up for failure looking for the perfect guy. I believe the same can be true with guys looking for perfect girls. As a society, we tend to discredit personalities because our first impressions weigh so heavily in our minds.
It’s sad, but it’s true. Everyone is guilty of it too, even if it’s subconscious. We were taught to compare not only ourselves but others as well to our idea of a perfect person. That stuck with me a little more than it should when I heard it in class. I mean, I knew it was true and I didn’t disagree with it, I just didn’t realize how normal it was to do it.
This, to me, is the worst part about media images, though: we apply this subconscious criticism to our own kind. For me, this looks like walking around campus and checking out the other girls to compare them to my idea of perfection. It’s something that I noticed I did after taking the class for only a week. Once you’re aware, it’s hard to see it any other way. I can’t be the only one stuck in this ongoing pattern of judgment not only for myself but for everyone else around me.
I don’t really know if there’s necessarily a fix for the way we think either. This is exactly the pattern that media images want us to fall into. Every ad, every post is posted for a reason. For advertisers, it’s a bit easier to understand because most of the time they’re trying to sell the audience a product. But, us normal people construct our own media messages as well through our social media pages. If you log onto Instagram, you see photos where that person thought they looked good and it’s almost as if they were looking for reassurance through likes and comments that they did, in fact, look good.
Our society has taught us to feel insecure and uncomfortable with ourselves by trying to make us compare ourselves and others to the idea of “perfection” when, in reality, there’s no such thing. The ads with the models who are as close to perfect as it gets were constructed to look that way. It’s impossible to reach that level and so much time is spent worrying about it, I know it’s that way for me at least.
