By Rhian Kille
I’m not addicted to shopping, I just can’t stop thinking about it. Right now Gen Z in particular is at odds with feelings of control, as we face climate change, inflation and governments whose beliefs are swerving further and further away from what makes sense to us. All while the phones we’re addicted to have been acclimatising us to having control. We curate our identities on Instagram in the hopes of controlling how people perceive us, form opinions on the constant onslaught of information we’re exposed to, and decide whether or not to buy into all the different products we’re being told we need. Social media is always right there to help us feel more in control, even if it’s all an illusion.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say social media isn’t real, that it’s presenting a false, perfect version of people’s lives, which I have always understood. But now I’m starting to realise that it never really sunk in. Social media and its constant exposure to manufactured images of others creates and exacerbates this generation’s struggles with regular socialising, community building and social anxiety. Together this is a recipe for low self-esteem, navel gazing, and an aversion to the negative and uncomfortable parts of life. We are a generation so hyper focussed on the utmost importance of identity, conceiving it as something we can control. Whether it’s something we buy or visually curate, turning identity creation into a fantasy in this way provides a false alternative to our true, more complex identities.
Coming of age and finding one’s place in the world in any generation is confusing, let alone one characterised by feelings of apathy about the future and world at large. But you know will make us feel better? Retail therapy. In a world that has arguably never been so image and beauty obsessed as right now, consumerism provides a way to microdose feelings of control. So naturally businesses make sure that the content we spend all day, every day exposed to is one big advert for the perfect identity, perfect life, perfect person. One click away.
Needless to say that because of the strong ties to beauty, the commodification of femininity and identity particularly affects women. Scrolling on TikTok for 5 minutes can have us believing that if I just buy this lip oil, I’ll be one step closer to being that girl I’ve always wanted to be. The put-together cool girl who is oh so outgoing, funny and intelligent, or whatever the perfect mirage of you is that you have in your head – the person you try to convince everyone on social media that you are. Humble, happy, interesting, maybe charitable? The fantasy of being the perfect woman becomes a product people are trying to sell you, even other women who just really wanted to feel like that fantasy, too.
At different difficult points of life I have fixated heavily on different products, whether it’s a dress, a lipstick or a perfume. Spending hours scrolling and searching for the perfect thing gives me that feeling of control over myself and my identity. The fact of the matter is that you’re already you! And buying things won’t make yourself ‘more’ you or a ‘better’ you, because your identity is not a perfect curation of products. It’s not something that can be bought, or even seen from the outside. This urge to create (and control) can be channelled into something else, investing in oneself is great, and cosmetics can be a hobby, but how many of us can honestly say it’s not at least partially about the pursuit of control, and the fantasy of perfection. Personally, I can’t.
The way the internet and consumerism function serves to distract us from bigger issues. Although you absolutely deserve that little treat for handing in your essay, it is so much easier to distract ourselves with a quick and easy shopping spree in order to affirm our identity and fix our self-esteem – a short cut to becoming the person we want to be. It is so much simpler, but it all just distracts us from more important external political issues and internal emotional ones. Social media allows us to subconsciously turn people, including ourselves, into perfect fantasy objects with no worries or flaws. It particularly leads women to want to become the same thing the patriarchy wants us to be, and erase so much of ourselves in the process. Even if it’s an amended ‘female gaze’ fantasy about being beautiful AND also intelligent, funny AND having good taste in books and music. It’s still functionally exactly what they want, which is for us to not be messy, ugly, authentic and flawed, thus empowered by being truly connected with ourselves and each other.
There is a level of alignment facilitated by a social media fantasy where our desires and that of patriarchy are the same: to erase our flaws and our pain. So when they shove the false ‘How To’ guide in our faces, we want so badly to follow along, because frankly their way is way easier than learning to sit in the ugliness, discomfort and the pain. Believing all that can be taken away allows us to act out living in the perfect world where even temporarily we feel like the perfect girl on the screen, where we’re happy, healthy and everything is easy, and most importantly, we’re beautiful.
Large swaths of social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok have become in essence a series of advertisements, full of people curating and commodifying their own identities, performing it for one another. It whispers that you just need the perfect cleanser and the perfect foundation, heatless hair curler, meal plan, workout routine, apartment, etc. In this life products bring perfection, and flatten us into a girl on a screen. That girl could be a model with millions of followers, or it could be you, yes you.
Unsurprisingly to literally everyone, my revolutionary suggestion is to put down the phone– seriously– and get to know each other for real. It might be annoying and uncomfortable at times, but understanding the real people, especially women, around us as whole, flawed people, who are sometimes annoying OR unfunny OR gross OR god forbid, ugly, as well as kind, wonderful and beautiful is important. Otherwise we’re constantly reducing them and ourselves to the list of products or qualities that make up a perfect, untouchable object. It’s like how people say that a crush is just a lack of information – if you’re pedestalising someone you probably just don’t know them well enough. We need to let go of such strict control, because true connection and self-actualisation demands messiness, mistakes and imperfection. Of course we should lead with support for one another, but I think we should push past the carefully curated identity we present each other with before we effusively dote on each other’s perfection, and stop letting the first thing we say when we meet a new potential friend instinctually be ‘you’re SO pretty, where did you get that top?’.
Image credit: freestocks via Unsplash