JULIE FROMM / ASST. OPINION EDITOR

Before getting ready for bed a few nights ago, I opened my phone to scroll on TikTok. I was met with countless videos of influencers expressing their ideas and tricks to “glow-up” in one month, one week or even overnight. The videos were made entirely by women, applying what they believed to be “miracle lotions” to their faces, layers of castor oil to their stomachs and masks that plug into the wall to illuminate their  faces in a red glow of light. Their  end goal  was to achieve their desired appearance before summer. 

I set my phone  down and held the bridge of my nose between my fingers in annoyance. Trying to keep up with product releases created to enhance your beauty is like trying to chase a speeding car down the freeway on foot.

As much as they bother me, the tips and tricks from these videos still slip into my psyche no matter how hard I try to ignore them. I looked at the array of products I’ve accumulated specifically for my appearance. The women who post these videos are beautiful, and it’s clear that they are willing to spend whatever amount of money it takes to conjure their “glow-up.”

 TikTok allows influencers and users alike to advertise products that enhance their physical appearance, whether it’s a hair mask, a foldable pilates reformer for at-home use, a lip plumper in a sparkly pink tube or a an eyelash serum to lengthen their natural lashes. Users like myself are bombarded with videos such as  these, and I often wonder why I am seeing them. 

Is it because I selected “female” as my gender on my profile, and therefore am condemned to seeing videos emphasizing appearance at all times? Or, is it because I am watching these videos ­— no matter how much I try not to — and allowing them to influence what I think of myself and how behind I am in preparing for my summer “glow-up”? 

I have spent years of my life thinking about how I look. I worry about what I wear, what makeup I choose to use, how I do my hair and whether or not my acne will clear up on its own or if I need to confer with a dermatologist. It is the most exhausting part of my life because it is a task that is never completed. When I cave and decide to buy one of the products that an influencer is advertising as life changing, I feel that I’ve solved a problem about my appearance that was never a problem in the first place only to find some other physical feature of mine to focus on the next day. There will never be an end to the ways in which I can “improve” myself until I decide that I don’t need improving. This is easier said than done, though, when social media implores me to achieve whatever peak appearance society deems acceptable at the time. 

The detrimental part of these videos is that they create a narrative that insinuates that you must look a certain way in order to do certain things. For example, you need abs in order to wear a bikini, you must have clear skin in order to post pictures on Instagram and you need the perfect outfit to go out on the weekends. This standard is not only exclusive, but also irreparably harmful. Some of the best advice I’ve ever received is that the people around me aren’t thinking about me. No one is thinking about how my skin looks or what I’m wearing. And I am not thinking about others, either. So, it should be simple to put down the phone and stop worrying about what others think of me, or if my body and my face are “summer ready,” right? 

The problem is that social media influencers, celebrities and brands don’t want this. If I accepted myself as I am and stopped chasing an unrealistic, unattainable version of myself, then they would lose my business and my viewership. There would be no pedestals to climb, no rankings to reach and no yardstick to measure myself against. The system would collapse, and  we  would probably be better for it — if we weren’t fighting  against our own human nature, as well. An article by Psychologs explains that 

“Humans have an innate desire for personal fulfillment and growth,” writes the health magazine. “While fulfilling, this quest also contributes to our constant desire for more, as achieving one goal often leads to the  pursuit of the next.” 

We are wired toward bettering ourselves, and we all know it. This is how companies and influencers are able to get us to buy the  collagen  mask  that will give  us glass  skin or the sweatshirt that we absolutely  have to have until the next best thing comes around. 

I don’t have an answer for how to wrangle the brain into self-acceptance. What I do know is that it begins with ignoring the narrative laid out for us. There is no product that can change the way you feel about yourself — that comes from within. So, I try to spend as little time as I can inspecting people’s pictures on Instagram and try to scroll past videos on appearance-enhancement  as fast as possible. 

I focus on things that feel truly fulfilling, like connecting with my friends and family and immersing myself in the world around me in a positive way. When my eyes linger a little too long on the pimples on my skin in the mirror, I tell myself that there is nothing about me that needs altering. What matters to my friends, my family and the people I care about is what  is happening internally, not externally. 

It’s easy to feel like you need to fit into the beauty standard when on social media. Photo courtesy of @missswiss/Unsplash