It’s a rainy Friday morning. I’m in my dorm, scrolling through TikTok as any college student does (I’ve finished my homework – don’t worry mom.) I’m filtering through all the targeted ads filled with perfect people with trim waists and porcelain skin. I know these ads know something about me: I’m a teenage girl in college. This means that I am their most insecure demographic—most susceptible to selling my soul to a 12-step skincare routine that will save my life somehow. I dodge the aspirations the ads are trying to dangle in front of me because while my feed is filled with an overwhelming abundance of perfect women smiling and laughing at how perfect they are, I remember what it’s like to look up from the screen. I know what normal, real people look like. 

But it’s in my dorm that Friday morning where I come across my final straw: a TikTok of a girl getting ready for a frat party at the University of Miami. She has long, perfect blonde hair and a perfectly structured face. She lathers on her makeup and gushes about how she didn’t expect her Halloween costume to go viral. She’s a college student, just like me. For a moment, I wonder how simple it must be to live her life. After all, when I open the comment section, it’s filled with men asking for a chance with her, for her hand in marriage, and even asking how much it would cost to purchase her bathwater (this is how men flirt in the year 2022.) After a quick scroll through her Instagram, I realize this girl is living a life adjacent to that of a Kardashian: professional, posed photos in designer brands in Vegas and Miami, with the world at her feet and in her comments. 

She reminds me of an entity I carried in my head throughout high school and a blueprint of myself that I had always wanted to fulfill. Girls like these were the reason I woke up an hour before school started, ravaging through makeup tutorials and strategically curling my eyelashes just for the chance to be noticed (use Euphoria’s Cassie Howard for reference). I desperately assigned myself the mission to bring this entity to life, because I knew this was what the people wanted. I knew this was what boys wanted, and at that point, that meant everything to me. I know that if I were a man, I would be so dazzled by this woman that I would hyper fixate on this social media persona she has designed – so much so that I would forget about the real women in my life. This would ignite a fear in me that all of the things that make me who I am are worthless in this department, as I live in the shadow of this woman on the internet. 

But it was during quarantine where I had this epiphany. I’m glad that the perfect girl on the internet exists because through a different lens, she’s inadvertently saving me. If men decide to indulge in her rather than the real women that exist in life, then it is through their ignorance that I am protected from being held to such an outrageously unrealistic standard. I know I will never be her, so why should I let her consume my life?  The men who are consumed by this egregious myth of a woman with no flaws should be banished into their basements to entertain something that does not exist, not to interact with real women who roam the world with good intentions. All women should be protected from men who hold them to such standards, especially young girls who have to grow through their most formative years hearing their flaws amplified and categorized into a label with wording like “crow’s feet” and “strawberry legs.” 

Whenever I get caught up in these expectations and stress that I need to change, I always look at photos of my younger self: usually a photo from before I hit the age of 12 and was made aware of such standards that were expected of me. There is one photo of myself in particular that I always come back to: I am sleeping peacefully on a chair in my childhood home, most likely dreaming about making it across the monkey bars. I am rocking pigtails and a vibrant pair of pink Uggs that made me feel like the coolest girl in the 3rd grade. I look at this photo of my younger self and think: “Who is trying to convince me that this amazing girl is not good enough?”

Now that I know companies don’t want me to think I am good enough, I am set free knowing I no longer have to value the standards it presents me with. The journey that I embark on to be a better person no longer includes saving up for rhinoplasty, ice-rolling my face (is that even effective?) or perfecting my body. My schedule is now cleared up to make room for doing my best in my classes, strengthening my friendships and expressing gratitude for the ones I hold close. I am never going to please everyone, so I may as well just invest my effort into the things I love. 

I feel good knowing I have the option to stop swimming upstream and unsubscribe from that standard. I am free. I let my hair grow its natural color because that’s what I was born with, and I don’t feel a need to impress anyone anymore. I like when people like me, but it’s even better when I know they like my genuine, natural self rather than some dramatic standard I know I could never live up to. When I look in the mirror, I remind myself I am not looking at my flaws. I am looking at the parts of myself that are unique and can’t be taken away. I feel secure in knowing that the people who are attracted to me enjoy the version of me that cannot be replaced, rather than a clone of someone else. I’m also very proud of the fact that I’ve gone from letting these standards steal the joy from my life to now, where I would not trade my life for anyone else’s. I wish the same fate for the other young, impressionable girls growing up in such a harsh society. I do not think I am perfect, but I enjoy being myself and knowing that’s good enough. It’s much less exhausting.

To quote Joe from the film “The Princess Diaries” (as he quoted Amelia Earhart), "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

Share