How Influencers on Instagram are Ruining Your Self Esteem

If you scrolled across Instagram you have probably seen Kylie Jenner posing on her yacht in a bikini seemingly having the perfect body or models like Bella Hadid's perfect selfies. These things are ruining your self esteem. You may not know it but subconsciously you are comparing your life to girls with lots of money who can afford face enhancers, plastic surgery, photo editors, and much more to improve their appearance. It was proven on many occasions that Kylie Jenner who is one of the most influential towards the teenage girl demographic, was finding ways to look better artificially. Some examples include her altering her images to make her body look appealing, getting plastic surgery, and her most famous yet most controversial lip fillers. This is giving young girls the wrong message. They know think that you're supposed to look flawless and have a body that isn't actually possible to get without surgical procedures. I believe that this needs to change by celeberties being open to retouching or just cutting this false beauty trend by being transparent about their procedures.

Reflection

Keeping this blog and learning about media literacy has not only made me a more aware consumer but it has done great things to me such as boost my self esteem. Before keeping this blog, I never knew how much the amount of media you consume a day affected your mental health. The more media you encounter the chances increase of you buying something that wasn't needed or even judging yourself since you don't look like that "perfect"model you see on Instagram. This soon becomes a problem when you constantly buy into trends since everyone has it or compare yourself to high standards you cannot reach without lots of money. Being aware with media consumption helps with avoiding these things. It makes you realize the technique advertisers use to make you feel inferior causing you to long to get your hands on a product. For example, I longed to get a new iPhone but I quickly realized that the updates were very minor and that Apple wanted you to feel like you needed a wide frame camera. During Black Friday I also resisted the urge to go shopping only because I knew that time pressure was a tactic that advertisers use to get consumers to spend. By knowing the implicit messages of a product I do consider myself to be more media literate.
My media consumption habits changed a lot this semester since I now limit the time I spend on social media to avoid the subliminal messages that are meant to harm people by telling them that they are inferior without the product. Overall, I believe that it is very important to have media literacy since lots of money will be spent without it. Like I said being an educated consumer is very important to avoid feeling inferior and to feel like you need a certain product in order to fit in or be accepted. In the end I got many things out of this blog. Some things that I got out of this blog are media literacy, the implicit messages that Instagram influencers use, and many more. Some other thoughts I have on media is that I think it's extremely evil to those that cannot afford an iPhone or the new trendy shoes. These things can be pretty pricey and the people who are well off can face some pretty difficult personal battles with pricey trendy products that everyone has.

Missrepresentation: The Struggle of Being a Women

On Monday I watched the documentary "Misrepresentation" that focused on how women are pressured to look and act a certain way. I found that most of these conflicts that were discussed in the documentary are still problems that occur today. For example in the documentary female politicians were sexualized which still happens in 2020. An example of a female politician getting sexualized is Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, according to Huff Post men are fascinated by her due to her young age and attractive appearance while being involved in politics which is quite rare. Another struggle that women face is underrepresentation in the media. In entertainment women are rarely not involved with romance. In plots there is always some love story in movies with a female lead. Most likely you cannot recall a single movie or TV show where a woman is the protagionist without a love life. This is ongoing unfortunately. Women in leadership is a concept that isn't widespread in America since it's reported that only 23% of the House of Representatives are women. This is proof that society makes it so that women have a difficulty leading. Lack of women in politics can have negative effects on girls since they have nobody to get inspired by causing a dearth of women in power. This can then cause males to have a step above women which many do not favor.











https://www.huffpost.com/entry/conservatives-afraid-alexandria-ocasio-cortez_n_5c38cb74e4b05cb31c421cc3