How Is Social Media Morphing Our Self-Image?
In the HBO documentary Fake Famous, three young people agree to participate in a social experiment. They move to Los Angeles and allow the film’s director to turn them into social media influencers. The documentary is meant to criticize how social media isn’t real and most images are manipulated
Slim Thick
The new ideal is a continuation of a body standard that is impossible to achieve, says Nicole Taylor, an associate professor of anthropology at Texas State University.
- Only a small percentage of women’s bodies are going to be able to achieve this with the targeted workouts, so more and more are getting plastic surgery.
Constant Comparison
Social media now provides users with a steady stream of images that are edited to fit with the new slim thick ideal
- We’re constantly staring at our phones and looking at these images and it creates a normalizing effect
- Upward comparison occurs when a person looks at images of a person they perceive as being better than themselves
Snapchat Dysmorphia
Social media has changed both expectations for the ideal body type and which facial features are now considered ideal
- The new ideal includes slanted, cat-like eyes, slender noses, high cheekbones and full lips
- Studies are seeing a connection between the editing tools and plastic surgery, a trend practitioners call “Snapchat dysmorphia”
- One study found that social media users who edit their photos were more likely to seek cosmetic enhancement
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