Everyone is told when they're growing up to be themselves, but in today's society it's hard to. With trends changing faster than a NASCAR pit team, people get so caught up in what's considered "glamorous" or "cool." People are becoming sheep of a flock, instead of being themselves - the purple sheep.
I admit to conforming to some trends, such as long hair, over-sized T-shirts, contouring, selfie-ing; ya know, things like that. People always want to do what's "in" even if they may regret their decision a year later. In eighth grade it was a huge fad to dye a strip of your hair on the underside with Kool-Aid. My friends and I sat in my bathroom and dyed a strip of our hair red, thinking it would come out within the next few weeks like how people said. Well, it was junior year of high school and I still had the red strip of Kool-Aid in my hair. It was probably one of the worst decisions I had made in middle school, besides thinking heavy black eyeliner looked good. During the moment though, I thought it was going to look so cool and that if I didn't dye my hair like my friends I would be missing out. In all honestly, I personally believe that people conform to some outrageous trends because they believe that if they don't they will miss out; this is known as FOMO (fear of missing out).
The other day I was on Snapchat and they have the magazines you can read where you see peoples' stories and so I clicked the Cosmopolitan one because I was bored and needed to occupy myself. As I clicked through the pages something came up called "glitter tears," where people are literally wearing glitter under their eyes like tears. To me this seems absurd, why would you want glitter on your face? A) it's almost impossible to get glitter off/out of anything B) why would you want it to look like you were crying glitter. But the sad thing is that the trend is catching on.
People see models, or well-known celebrities changing their appearance and all of the sudden they dye their hair purple like Kylie Jenner. We sit around with our friends or people around us listening to their ideas and these things distorting our own perceptions beliefs. Growing up as a child and young adult there is a need to fit in. There are consequences and effects peer pressure has on children and young adults. It's a normal human emotion to want to be like and accepted by all. The problem that urges on is that there are these urges to fit in and conform continue into adulthood sometimes causing people to be in unsuitable relationships and careers. People follow the flock of sheep, never being their own sheep; never being the purple sheep.
