We've all done it before - you're on your Instagram feed, see a girl a million times prettier than you - in full makeup, hair, and the latest clothes. And then you look down at your old pair of gym shorts, and the t-shirt you got three years ago and start to feel less than. Subconsciously, you're getting more and more down on yourself, and the expectation of how you should look on a daily basis has just gone up... A LOT. Ladies, we need to talk about this.

The girls who dress up for Instagram shouldn't dictate how you feel about yourself. The picture you're looking at is that girls best version of her exterior self (come on, no one posts a selfie unless you think you look good.) Seeing pictures like that made me think I needed to look like that all the time too. When in reality, I'm sure she has the same ugly gym shorts that she also wears when no one is looking. My point is that our generation of females are confusing perception with reality. The perception of people we know on social media is not their 24-hour running reality; it's merely their ideal portrayal of themselves. It's an image forever fixed in the scroll of social media, it's there for the onlooker to strike a comparison anytime they want (don't act like you don't creep, we all do).

The availability to make comparisons like this is what killed my self esteem in high school. I was always wanting to be more of something: skinnier, more "put-together", have more clothes, more makeup, etc. The subconscious thought of feeling less than is what agitated my insecurities so that they could be noticeable. I struggled with wondering why I couldn't look as good -while looking in a mirror at myself- as that girl on Instagram. But what I learned is that no one looks like their photos. The reality of women's appearances can be drastically influenced by camera angle, lighting, and sheer luck. It took me a couple years to figure out that the girl on Instagram who looked like she effortlessly appeared beautiful took approximately 43 previous selfies before the one I was seeing made the cut.

The problem with social media is the inaccurate portrayal of effortless beauty. It makes every single female experience FOMO of the gene pool. Sometimes it's easy to forget that every person's appearance is altered in some way when it comes to social media, whether it's their make up, the filter they chose, or the angle in which the picture was taken, it's all fabricated! I'm sure if you got to know that girl from Instagram (that you refer to by their username) in person, she'd start to look more realistic. You might even find she has that same pair of ugly gym shorts you do.