Imperfect people – Just Jack

It’s July – and it’s that time of the year when clothes seem to have become optional. The stars of the media have taken a ‘minimal-coverage’ approach to clothing, opting for the greatest amount of skin on show that they possibly can without having their content removed.

For the rest of us – who don’t have the privilege of Airbrushing and Photoshopping ourselves, who don’t get to review and change every pixel of our appearance, and can’t spend all our time perfecting a specially curated and intense fitness plan – this summer-time trend can be incredibly damaging and mentally-draining.

Scrolling through virtually any social media application, all we see are perfect images of seemingly perfect bodies, which audiences believe are not only attainable, but necessary to get happiness.

Which leads me on to the fact that practically nothing on the likes of Facebook and Instagram is real. A photo can be altered with something as simple as a camera filter, maybe to give it an extra glow.

More drastically, apps such as FaceTune, which are now readily available, allow people to change things such as their skin tone, their body shape, and their hair and eye colour, as well as cover-up things such as spots and acne – so do the photos we see contain real people at all?

Even with this knowledge, looking at them still creates an impression that, to be ‘attractive’ in this day and age, you have to look exactly like the people you see on your screen – even though the people on the other side of the phone look nothing like the photos themselves.

Unintentionally, a cohort of insecure youths who think negatively about their body image has been generated. Social media helps to create a false idea that beauty is based, number one, on looking like the KarJenners, and number two, entirely on what someone looks like.

This idea of judging someone based on appearance isn’t confined to traditional social media.

Perhaps the most obvious example is dating apps, such as Tinder, where you view someone’s profile, and choose whether to swipe right or left, if you like them or not – again reinforcing the idea that attraction is based solely on appearance.

Aside from social media, platforms such as magazines, TV shows and movies also have helped to create these unattainable beauty standards.

An obvious example is the reality-dating show Love Island.

Contestants are cast predominantly on their appearance – thin, tanned and athletic – which subconsciously leads us to believe that this is the target demographic for relationships.

If you don’t look like these people, you simply aren’t deserving.

ALL forms of media need to widen the pool of representation to demonstrate the diversity of real people.

With all that being said, it wouldn’t be fair of me to whine for an entire column without presenting at least some kind of credible solution. The truth is, fixes in this space are difficult, and these companies have created a kind of ‘closed-loop’ where it’s impossible to escape their current practices.

Perhaps, though, rather than altering the way their content is displayed, apps could try to reduce the impact of it on their audience – maybe by offering mental health support, or limiting user’s daily usage. Companies must take practical steps to ensure the content they promote doesn’t exacerbate body image concerns. All of these things should be extremely easy to implement, but maybe the financial gain may not be as rewarding.

Other apps, such as the recently popular ‘BeReal’, as the name suggests, force users to post a photo of what they are actually like – no filters, FaceTune, or Photoshop – just a plain photo of the user.

They achieve this by, once a day, at a random time, sending out a notification telling users that it’s time to BeReal, giving them two minutes to post a photo – furthermore discouraging retaking or deleting these photos.

The whole point of this is to show that social media, whilst having many advantages, can be, if abused, extremely harmful, and can affect people in incredibly serious ways.

Social media companies MUST strive to make their platforms more user-friendly, swapping out their concern for money, with a concern for their users.

The Draft UK Online Safety Bill proposes a duty of care upon social media companies to protect users – which, if followed, can hopefully reduce the surge of frustration with current practices.

So, the next time you see a photo of the KarJenners that epitomises perfection, take a moment to consider the number of retakes and revisions it took to reach that point.

By Jack Baxter