Social Media Beauty Standards

SOCIAL MEDIA BEAUTY STANDARDS 

                                                                                    

The Oversaturation of beautiful faces

The Algorithm’s Favoritism towards pretty people has been called out by users over the past few years

The push of pretty people through-out social media has taken a toll on our perception of beauty.

Someone once said that ‘We weren’t supposed to see this amount of beautiful people in our lifetime’ and I couldn’t agree more

The over excessive use of filters has warped our reality on how we are supposed to look and has left many of us feeling like a catfish

Impostor syndrome is at an all-time high, as many of us have this underlying fear that we look nothing like the version of ourselves, we put out there on social media, and even if we do, we don’t look like that 90% of the time

The beauty standards we have set is no longer realistic as evident in the rise of plastic surgery, fillers and Photoshop

The never ending chase for Beauty is a Rat race, I don’t think we’d ever win.

see here

Hi, I'm kristie your author for the day, now before we use fancy words like the algorithm and the matrix, let's double down back shall we? what exactly are these beauty standards we speak of? who created them? what on earth is the Algorithm?

The Beauty Standards

Oh my! How Times have changed drastically since the 2010’s...

The Rapid Evolution of Social media over the past few years has resulted in a lot of changes. 

These changes were Pioneered and heavily influenced by the year 2020 (The Quarantine/Lockdown era), which was a life changing year for all of us, it was a year that had us all trapped in our homes with nothing to do but tiktok dances and social media challenges.

It was a year that gave birth to the rise of platforms like Tiktok, Thriller, Clubhouse, etc.

The biggest of these platforms being Tiktok, which has had the most impact on our society today

Tiktok has become a Global Powerhouse, a great marketing and advertising tool which has contributed to the success of many Businesses, Music Artistes, Creators,etc

These days all it takes to blow up is to have a viral song, dance or challenge on tiktok and boom you're good to go

The Influence of  tiktok, in such a short period of time is nothing like we have ever seen before.

Tiktok trends has taken the world by storm and in this day and age having a viral video on tiktok can quite literally change your life.

How did social media become this Influential?

In 2020, social media usage was at an all time record breaking high. 

Understandably so, because we were all stuck at home with nothing to do, but with social media trends to keep us busy.

A lot of people were being laid off their jobs, which led them to seek for other sources of income they could do from the comfort of their homes

This search led people to Start YouTube channels, Podcasts, Online businesses and post content on monetized platforms such as Only fans,Tiktok and many more.

The social media industry was booming. 

People started to realize that they could actually could make a decent living off of social media, and so they did.

As time went on, a lot of Content Creators came out the woodworks as the potential of social media became more recognized.

 

THE ALGORITHM

Virality is the new Currency?

“Tiktok famous” is a term that was coined and widely used in 2020 to describe the seemingly overnight fame and success platforms like tiktok gives to a select few

The select few that has managed to achieve this fame and stardom, all had something in common; They were considered to be Beautiful by societal and social media standards

People started to notice how the algorithm seemed to favor a certain type of demographic.

A Paradigm shift happened, where it seemed like Fame was no longer handed to those with talent, but to people who society considers ‘Pretty’

The topic of pretty privilege was on everybody‘s lips as the favoritism by the algorithm didn’t go unnoticed.

Pretty people would do the most mediocre things and go viral

Take Bella Poarch and her infamous M to the B video for example, a very pretty girl and one of the most Successful tiktokers turned celebrity today. 

She holds the record for the most liked and most viewed video on tiktok, with over 740 million views and 60.6 million likes and all she did in the video was bob her head.

see video here

But for us regular folks the case is very much different, if anything it is quite the opposite; we have to the do the most and actually put in a lot of work to even get half of the fame and recognition  she gets.

Virality has become our new currency, a one way ticket to potential fame and stardom.

The importance of views and likes has creeped it’s way and trickled down into the real world from the digital world.

Everybody wants to go viral. Fame and clout has become one helluva drug and some people are willing to do anything to get it

Everybody looks the same?

As stated earlier, people started to notice how a certain type of Aesthetic got the most attention on social media

Subconsciously the thought that if we look more like these people we will also get the same amount of attention they do

And as a result everyone started to look the same; the same clothes, the same body, the same lips, the same veneers, the same hair, the same makeup, the same fillers, surgery, filters and so on

And while there is nothing wrong in wanting to invest in your looks, r "Originality never goes out style"

And with this my dear reader, i bid you farewell, Remember 'a beast only grows bigger if you feed into it'

Written By Kristie Abbey

#tiktok #beautystandards #socialmedia