By Madelyn Ilarraza
Do you actually want a nose job or are you subscribing to trends and succumbing to society’s narrow framework for approval? Is lip filler really going to empower you, or are you insecure because everyone else has it?Â
Body Dysmorphic Disorder, or body dysmorphia, has increased with the rise of social media, and it seems like new insecurities are created every few weeks. Companies create problems to sell solutions. On TikTok, beauty trends morphed from trying out different makeup styles, to people posting trying to get strangers to validate their beauty according to whichever fad was popular at the time. People forget what human beings look like. Under all the filters, editing, and makeup, skin has texture and discoloration. Bodies aren’t smooth and perfectly shaped, behind all the posing and angles, everyone’s body looks different. You can’t achieve a completely different body type following some random influencer’s workout routine.
We are so used to seeing perfect and beautiful people, that when we look at ourselves, we think that we are the outliers. We were never supposed to see this many beautiful people, as weird as it sounds. With social media, everyone you see is perfect. Every influencer carefully crafts their online appearance, yet the viewers still believe that this is what normal people are supposed to look like. Even if you are aware that someone has undergone plastic surgery or any other kind of cosmetic procedure, it’s still easy to compare yourself against the naturally unachievable.Â
The normalization of cosmetic procedures has warped our perception of beauty. Many surgeons prey on the insecurities of young women so that they go under the knife. Many women also use celebrities as references when getting surgery. The beauty standard constantly changes with every decade. While celebrities can afford to reverse cosmetic procedures, and even get new ones, the average person can’t.Â
Some plastic surgeons also use social media to review procedures that women have gotten. One surgeon even guessed the ages of the female contestants on Love Island, purposefully estimating that they were decades older than they actually are. He shamed the women for getting the procedures that keep him employed.Â
The outreach social media provides makes it so easy to be exposed to this type of content. While it is unavoidable, we must keep in mind that not everything we see is real, and that we shouldn’t compare ourselves to something that took cosmetic procedures to create.