Truly inspirational women don’t obsessively preach that influencers post the best photo and delete the rest. Enough of this virtue signaling already.
The Internet – namely Instagram and TikTok – has created a strange genre of moral theatre: the “honesty post.”
You’ve probably seen it countless times. An influencer uploads side-by-side photos.
On the left: a flattering, carefully posed image labeled “What I posted.”
On the right: an unflattering angle or posture labeled “What I tossed.”
The caption explains that social media is curated, filtered and unrealistic. The message is supposed to be empowering. It gets eaten up by the dozens of vulnerable, gullible, wayward women who make comments to the post.
In reality, the entire performance has become one of the most tired and self-congratulatory trends in cyberspace.
I mean, come ON, how daft must one be not to realize that those ultra-glam influencers with the perfect bodies post only the best of the best of their stockpile of photos? Is this not third-grade-level understanding?
Even kindergarteners will intuitively hand their parents only the best of their crayon drawings from school to post on the refrigerator and chuck the rest.
Can we end it already?
Almost everyone already knows that social media is curated. How would you not know this by common sense, logic and intuition?
Who actually needs some influencer to provide this very obvious fact? Shall we call in Captain Obvious to give a stern admonition? It’s old. It’s tiresome.
It’s insulting to women – even if there actually exist those who blame the pictures of a stranger’s “unattainable” body on their own body insecurities.
Recently a woman made history by being the first female astronaut to travel to the moon’s dark side.
She’s getting less celebrated – much less so – than influencers posting yet another “what gets posted” and “what gets deleted” side-by-side. Oh Lord.
No wonder the aliens refuse to contact us; they think that collectively, we’re just too dumb and simpleminded.
Repeating this same revelation over and over doesn’t make someone brave or insightful. It doesn’t make them worthy of being celebrated. It doesn’t make them inspirational.
I just read about an autistic, semi-verbal teen who runs with his school’s track team, every morning jogging lap after lap after lap in the school’s gymnasium before his first class. Now that’s inspirational!
He’s thin. If he were a she, you can bet the “queen” influencers and their sheep followers would be pegging the girl with a restrictive eating disorder and body dysmorphia.
These influencers, who think they can change the world, keep pummeling out recycled messages about women’s bodies, while at the same time, chastising anyone who comments on another woman’s body. These are not “make it make sense” moments.
It just makes them another participant in a predictable ritual that rewards influencers for appearing “authentic” while still staying firmly in the spotlight.
The problem isn’t that the message is wrong – even though it has a lot of “duhhh” to it.
It’s that the message is shallow and increasingly treated like some kind of moral breakthrough. The comments that these cringe-worthy side-by-sides get? They reveal just how frail today’s young women have become.
I just don’t recall any of this backwardness when I was a young adult. My critics will argue that Instagram and TikTok didn’t exist back then.
I say SO WHAT. There was still a form of social media: magazines, tabloids, elite fashion shows and film.
As a child I loved the TV series “Emergency.” In all the scenes inside the hospital, there were always a bunch of nurses walking all over the place.
They all appeared 105 pounds soaking wet. It never bothered me. I never thought, “OMG, that’s what I’m supposed to look like when I grow up!”
I saw pictures of gorgeous women in magazines; they never made me feel bad about myself.
Over the past 10 to 15 years, there’s been a surge of extreme attention focused on women’s bodies – and these “keep it real” influencers are all part of this. THEY are part of the problem that they’re obsessively trying to solve.
The “Social Media Isn’t Real” Revelation Isn’t a Revelation
They tell us that what we see online is only a tiny sliver of reality.
This insight is presented as if it’s a shocking truth that people desperately need to hear.
And actually, there are young women who’ll post that tiresome, “I needed this today!” But I sure hope they make up only a tiny minority of the fan base; otherwise, our future is in deep sh#t trouble.
If you need a social media star to tell you what’s as obvious as the sun is round, then you need to stop blaming your insecurities on social media and probe for the root cause of such frailty.
The idea that social media shows the best moments of someone’s life is hardly groundbreaking.
It’s been discussed in news articles, documentaries, academic research and countless opinion columns for over a decade.
- Schools talk about it.
- Parents talk about it.
- The big revelation has been covered ad nauseum. (And that could be, in part, why more than ever, young women obsess about comparing their bodies to other women’s.)
Yet influencers continue delivering the same canned message on repeat.
Stop the script, please. I’d like to think that most of the up-and-coming female generation doesn’t have that “I needed this today” mentality.
The “Bad” Image on the Right
The supposedly embarrassing photo on the right side of the image? It wasn’t randomly discovered in someone’s camera roll.
It was selected. Positioned. Cropped. Framed. Uploaded with intention.
Even the act of showing imperfection becomes part of a calculated presentation. It’s madness – monitized madness.
The Low Bar for Internet Heroism
Influencers who post these “reality check” images are often flooded with comments describing them as inspiring, courageous and empowering. And just what they needed that day.
Meanwhile, the world is full of women doing things that actually require courage or whose stories are truly inspirational.
There’s nothing groundbreaking, impressive or inspirational about endless preaching of what photos influencers post and which ones get discarded. Yet these self-proclaimed body image experts are hailed for this. I mean, seriously?
Many live affluent, childfree lives in which they set their schedules and can take a vacation on a whim.
Meanwhile, so many women are struggling to pay basic bills, pray that their car will start in the morning and must miss much needed workdays when their kid gets sick.
These women rarely receive viral praise for posting a mildly awkward selfie.
Yet on social media, the bar for heroism can appear astonishingly low. A carefully staged “I’m not perfect either!” post can generate thousands of likes and comments declaring the creator a role model.
Influencers learn that vulnerable content performs well. Audiences learn that praising vulnerability feels good. The platform amplifies the behavior. The cycle has no end.
The Hidden Patronizing Tone
Another rarely discussed aspect of these posts is the implication that the audience needs to be reminded of something painfully obvious.
“Remember that social media isn’t real,” the captions say. But most people already understand this. It assumes the audience is incapable of basic media literacy.
But what about the ones who actually do lack this basic media literacy? Aren’t these “real” influencers benefiting their self-worth?
Maybe for only that particular day when they “needed this.” Then the poor self-worth is reset come next day.
These individuals need to get off social media, or at least stop viewing reels and shots of glamorous size 4-6 women, and start exploring what they might be good at in life, focus on their skills – and run with that.
Some mental health counseling will help as well, to dig deeper to learn the root cause of massive body insecurities. It’s certainly not NikkyRae on Instagram or JaymiRose on TikTok.
Real Confidence Doesn’t Require an Announcement
One of the ironies of the “posted vs. deleted” trend is that genuine self-confidence rarely needs to advertise itself.
Women who are comfortable with themselves don’t feel the need to repeatedly demonstrate their imperfections for validation.
None of this means conversations about body image or mental health are unimportant.
But instead of applauding influencers for reminding us that lighting and body position affects photos, we could showcase stories of women tackling real-world challenges.
Stop talking about what your body looks like already.
