Striving to Perfection: The American Girl Edition

We all have probably seen accounts on various social media platforms such as Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter that we all try to be like in some way. A lot of the content that is posted is fun to look at while you’re scrolling through your phone, but it doesn’t paint the best picture on the way society is going. Much of the content that is posted is in relation to dieting, materialism, and the strive to perfection. Perfection in today’s society is glamorized, but it completely unachievable. I am not saying that everything will always be completely genuine and that everyone will always be happy. However, the way younger women are painted on the internet create an unhealthy reality that cause women to never feel like they’re enough. More recently, brands like Dove and CoverGirl look to paint the picture that nobody’s perfect and we all have something to be happy about within ourselves. These advertising campaigns are helping change the landscape of the way young girls look at themselves. Most people we see online, have had their hair and makeup done before taking that picture, and their staff have edited that picture so much that it doesn’t even look like the original. A study was done by Dove in over 10 different countries and found that only two percent of women consider themselves beautiful. Some of this can be attributed to the fact that we never see any flaws on social media, nobody ever posts a bad picture of themselves. Sometimes taking a break from the world of social media can be healthy, to focus on yourself and begin to find what makes you feel beautiful, not what others want to.