Your day is a lot: you get up, get ready, eat, go to school, activities, go home, repeat. Somehow in the midst of your busy schedule, you manage to find some time to click on Instagram or Tiktok, or even both.
You look in the mirror and back at your phone. I will never meet up to those standards. It’s like your thumb is automatic – an instinct. Each scroll lasts about 30-60 seconds. The video you come across is either someone lip syncing to the latest and most viral hit songs, doing GRWM’s, flexing at the gym and more.
Every one of those scrolls is a ‘representation’ of your self esteem – plummeting when you realize that you will never ‘be like them’, with your average For You page looking like this:
“Morning sheds”: this trend involves an overnight ‘routine’ where you wrap your face in sculpting face wraps, put heatless curls in your hair and a lot of skincare on your face.
“Looksmaxxing”: a term used for reaching the ultimate goal of ‘being attractive ‘, which can involve bimaxillary osteotomy– where you basically smash your jaw muscles to reshape and reconstruct your face, to look more ‘masculine;’.
“Clean girl aesthetic”: glossy lips, slicked back hair, overall ‘flawlessness’ and lots and lots of matcha.
But have you ever considered the truth behind the screen – the truth behind both sides of the screen?
In a survey conducted by The Bite, respondents were asked which beauty trends are they getting slammed with, and one of the respondents talked about the “face card” as something that was significant now in terms of beauty trends on social media.
People believe that the ‘face card’ is something that represents respectability and/or status. Like the trends online, ‘paying with a face card’ makes people believe that prettier people are superior because they don’t need money for people to like them because they are gorgeous. I feel like people who “don’t have a face card” become more insecure with this and feel discriminated against.
Grade 9 student
So why is it like this? Why is there a constant need for teens to excel, especially when it comes to how they look?
In this feature, I aim to bring awareness to how different beauty standards impact and play a major role in influencing how teens and young adults perceive themselves, and why the “ideal” standards are making them feel like they need to “change” or “looksmax,” with the help and opinions of Secondary students and counselor.
Where Did Beauty Standards all Start?
Beauty aesthetics and trends come and go, constantly, but where did they actually start? From fashion magazines – who have promoted unrealistic beauty standards, by picking out the most attractive models for their shoots, to influencers on social media promoting beauty products and picking out the best videos to post. Where did the most recent beauty/aesthetic trends on social media spark from?
Let’s break it down:
Unachievable beauty standards have been promoted through magazines like Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, setting the stage for an ‘ideal’ look.
According to Journal of Emerging Technologies and Innovative Research (JETIR), “Fashion magazines have been criticized for promoting unrealistic beauty standards through the use of thin, conventionally attractive models, which can lead to feelings of inadequacy in many women. This unattainable beauty standard has been linked to an increased risk of body dissatisfaction and eating disorders, especially among young women.”
Trends like the “Clean Girl Aesthetic” and “Morning Sheds”, are very popular in the whole “clean” aesthetic on social media, especially on young women and teens. The “Clean girl aesthetic” may have conceivably been influenced from the 90’s “Supermodels off-duty look” and early 2010’s wellness culture/trends. Social media platforms undoubtedly took these early trends and refined them to fit into a “standard”: clear skin, glossy lips, slick back, pilates. And not just a look, a lifestyle.
Young Men Also Impacted By Beauty Standards
The whole “looksmaxxing” trend has gone viral in recent years, influencing younger men into opting to “maximize” their masculine appearance, in order to have a more defined and symmetrical face. This trend has been around for years, originating in the Incel online community, but has regained popularity and prominence on social media platforms like Tiktok.
The Incel (involuntary celibate) community was born in online message boards that consisted of heterosexual men who based their identities on the lack of romantic attention they’ve had from women. As stated on Europol, “In these communities misogynist ideology and collective victimhood are central aspects of belonging.” The same source also clarified that incels are most commonly and solely based on appearance and how “they’re not attractive enough for women.”
This movement has shifted to a wider and border audience, diving more into the “manosphere” trend. This trend could have presumably been popularized by influencers such as Andrew Tate and Clavicular (real name Braden Peters). The “manosphere” trend continues to play a role in influencing young boys as young as ten years old, as well as playing an influence on what they see on social media.
Jason Fierstein, founder of Phoenix Men’s Counselling told Healthline “Young men fall into this false sense of acceptance, and what they believe women want from them. They can get caught up in potentially lifelong struggles with feeling inadequate and handling that inadequacy.”
Despite the fact that a lot of men are following trends and directions to look more masculine appearance, other men on social media are trying to call out the whole “toxic masculinity” hype, and trying to tone it down.
Dr. Michael Mrozinski, who spent 15 years as a sports physician and doctor, cautions that “It might have started off as ‘here’s my gym routine, here’s my skincare routine,” but now it has turned into: “Here’s how I make my cheekbones bigger – by smashing them with a hammer.”
Mrozinski also noticed how certain trends that were heavily concerning masculinity turned into an “absolute monster” with the rise of looksmaxxing; he currently uses his platform on social media to warn his 180,000 followers about the dangers inherent in this trend.
One Scroll, and No Going Back
So what are the impacts of social media’s trends and aesthetics on young adults and teens? Let’s face it, social media is really popular. Your classmates had it before you, you begged your parents to have it, and well, now you have it. But have you ever considered the impacts behind every scroll?
According to Elite Learning, here’s a short list:
- Low self esteem: a negative way of perceiving yourself, either physically or mentally + overall low self-confidence.
- Body dysmorphia: distorted image/way of seeing yourself in front of a mirror, photos and/or just in general
- Eating disorders: unregular patterns of consuming food/an unhealthy relationship with food in general, often stemmed from body dysmorphia/low self esteem to live up to a certain standard by changing the way you look
- Anxiety and depression: comparison from social media can lead to higher stress levels and depression.
Unattainable beauty standards have caused an increase in low mental health generally. The constant comparison that every teen is taking after every scroll, and scroll, is leading to a downfall in their self-esteem and how they perceive themselves.
So let’s accept that it’s not just evil and trying to be mean. But [the] influence that social media has is comparing your insides with other people’s outsides. So people present the best of themselves online because obviously they want it to look good. No one wants to look their worst online.
Counselor Scott Langston
Influencers’ Influence on Beauty Standards
Influencers are constantly promoting different products, different makeup styles and techniques on social media, but what exactly do they do in terms of promoting and sparking influence on the consumers of their content?
In a survey conducted by The Bite, receiving 15 responses, Secondary students pointed to influencers’ appearances on their typical ‘FYP’s’ (For You Pages). Some students chose to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of this topic:
Theres a lot of influencers wearing expensive and trendy clothes, as well as a bunch of make-up and most of them (if not all) are skinny or claim they know the beauty secret.
Grade 7 student Laetitia V.
I normally see girls who are normal and do get ready with me or other videos similar. However I do also get a lot of videos of very big influencers or models who are very pretty on my page.
Grade 11 student
I mostly just see “get ready with me” and videos on beauty products to use.
Grade 8 student
These three students show how influencers play a major role in the contribution of promoting certain projects, despite the product actually being reliable or not. Different beauty brands that want their product to be promoted and advertised, often ask influencers to purposefully market their products through GRWM’s (Get Ready With Me’s), hauls, and reviews.
According to Elite Learning “some influencers advocate for body positivity and self-acceptance.” By promoting unfiltered content, influencers are enabling #NoFilter and #BodyPositivity tags when posting media. This point will be further discussed in the “But… Is It All Bad?” section below.
How Society Perceives Beauty
As we all know, social media has contributed to more idealized aesthetics of how people should look or not look, which could have stemmed from deeper routes of fashion magazines. Nowadays, more beauty standards follow a more westernized take, which is being thinner, having clear skin and an overall a more symmetrical face.
Grade 10 student Charlotte G. shares her personal thoughts and opinions about how society perceives beauty nowadays:
“There’s a certain stereotype that you kind of have to fit in just so that society finds you beautiful.”
Charlotte adds that she thinks, “obviously everyone has a different opinion on what’s beautiful, but society as a whole has this idealised version of what beauty is, so I think it’s very corrupted and changed over time.”
Charlotte then talks about the most ideal and recent ways of how someone should look like based on society’s perspective.
I think based on society you need to be skinny. You need to have perfect hair, perfect skin. A lot of people want to be blonde. [And people especially find] their own features weird because just every feature is so sexualised or changed to be implied weirdly.
Without a doubt, beauty standards and aesthetics are everywhere, and it’s not our job to stop them but to be more aware about them and how they affect us both mentally and physically.
By being aware of the fact that a lot of the content put out there is not necessarily real, it’s easier to see you for you, and not you for how society portrays/perceives an “ideal” person.
It’s very easy to fall into the same “doomscroll” cycle, then comparison trap, especially when it comes to looks, but being aware might really help with seeing the truth and the reality, and not the lies that the screen is projecting at someone.
Scott Langston, our Secondary counselor, added this cautionary note:
The algorithm that social media uses, focuses on what you see and gives you more of it. And because, as we know, with addiction science, if you begin to get addicted to a substance, you eventually need more of it to get the same effect. And social media is exactly the same.
But… Is It All That Bad?
While social media can elevate unattainable beauty/aesthetics standards and ideals, it can also be a great tool in promoting body positivity, with influencers promoting diversity, like skin conditions and different body types.
“[My For You page] usually talks about body positivity and how everyone is perfect,” reports a grade 6 student respondent to The Bite’s survey, supporting this idea.
Even though social media is not all that bad, being aware about the influences of them can be very helpful in ensuring that body positivity and inclusivity gets advocated and more reassuring to media consumers, especially if they tend to be on social media often. Instead of falling into the same comparison cycle, more diverse beauty depictions can spark more body positive media content.
At the end of the day…or at the end of every scroll… my research indicates that it’s best to be aware of the content that one is consuming, especially when recognizing that it’s not the best for their mental well-being. It’s all about finding the balance between one’s scroll and social media life, which can sneakily cause someone to fall into the endless loop of look comparison and toxic negativity, and become more unaware of the reality and ‘real life’ that is all around the screen in the palm of their hand.
“The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel,” American Pastor and writer, Steven Furtick, once truthfully stated.
And that’s exactly how it is, especially when it comes to how we look.
Thank you, Katherine, for writing such an interesting article. As social media becomes a bigger part of teens’ daily lives, the content we see on our FYP can shape how we view ourselves and the standards we feel we’re expected to meet. Amazing article!
I’m glad you enjoyed reading this article!
Very detailed and fun to read!