It isn’t a secret that celebrities photoshop their social media pictures, brands have been retouching their campaigns since the technology to do so became available, however, many young people get sucked into the belief that Instagram models with unreal bodies are somehow the standard and are therefore pushed into unhealthy eating habits. While I absolutely agree that not everything we see on social media is how it is, I also believe that we need to take a hard look at ourselves and understand that if we continue to point out flaws in people’s bodies, we only increase their likelihood of sharing tweaked pictures of themselves.
A couple of days ago, Sara Sampaio, the Victoria’s Secret angel, shared a video of herself posing in different ways to show how a simple movement could make a difference between having visible rolls or visible abs. She also shared some headlines about herself over the years where journalists speculated about her being pregnant because she simply appeared relaxed rather than posed. Some websites went as far as writing “pregnant or fat” as a title as if her body couldn’t just look different on different occasions. Many of the headlines referred to some pictures of her at one of VS’s fashion shows and I do remember how many tweets I had seen of people wondering the same as the newspapers: was she pregnant just because she didn’t look as slim as usual? I can’t help to imagine what that type of pressure must do to a person. To think that she was lucky enough to walk in one of the most important fashion shows in the world and probably worked her ass off to appear as toned and “model beautiful” as possible and to have people wonder if she was pregnant must put such a strain on someone’s mental health and I wouldn’t blame her for working hard on appearing super slim online just to avoid people intruding her personal life.
Something similar happened with Kendall Jenner when she posted pictures of herself modeling her sisters’ new lingerie collection for SKIMS. Someone on my Twitter feed asked what people thought about her and the tweet received hundreds of replies saying she was disgusting cause she had photoshopped her body to extreme proportions that looked fake and weird. Someone even pointed out, very innocently, that her hips were not symmetrical (something I only noticed when I specifically went to look for it) showing how much scrutiny every single picture receives. Now two things: first of all my hips are nowhere near symmetrical, there is nothing straight about my spine and it is definitely more noticeable than Kendall’s, I don’t much care because I don’t see it as much of an issue, however, I did feel self-conscious when I read that tweet because I realized that it clearly must be more noticeable than I think. Secondly, I have seen Kendall before, many times during fashion week in Milan I just saw her walking down the street and I have to say she doesn’t look too different from her pictures. She’s very skinny, her waist is very slim and her hips are generally curvier than other models’. While her pictures may be slightly photoshopped, her real proportions (which I think are super hot) are not too far off of what people were calling disgusting and weird with the idea that they were fake.
Now I’m not advocating for photoshop, however, we’ve all criticized celebrities and other people for the way they looked. Khloe Kardashian was the ugly fat sister for years before she embarked on a massive fitness journey, now she works out as an athlete and there are still people who find it in themselves to make snarky comments about her body. I just think we cannot expect people not to photoshop their pictures when we can’t help but criticize what they look like naturally.