After staring at my wardrobe for what seemed like forever, and trying on a good 5 or so outfits I settled with what I was going to wear for the day.
No, this isn't going to be a post about fashion, or how to have a capsule wardrobe (though I would love to nail that!), it's a post about the pressure we put on ourselves to appear *insert word here*...
The word could be "stylish", "on trend", "effortless", "cute", "sporty", "confident". How we appear... perfect.
We don't limit this to clothes either, we do this when it comes to exams, school, in our hobbies or sports groups, in social situations and even around friends and family.
Why?! Why do we do this to ourselves?
I think there's a number of reasons but here are a couple...
1. Comparison
We are constantly exposed to snippets of the "ideal" life, body, partner, you name it, through social media. Yes, we have struggled with unachievable advertising for years but when I was a teenager magazines and celebrities were pretty much the only big factors; yes like anyone else I compared myself to friends or others in school, but I could seen them in full light, not just an edited snippet.
Nowadays (how old do I sound?!) we are bombarded with fake perfection as we are constantly connected to the world of social media. Don't get me wrong, I love social media - it's creative, inspiring, feel-good, and informative. But it can also be used negatively, not just through cyber bullying and awful content but by giving us a false sense of what is real. We see edited pictures, the best bits of someone's life, we see people at their best angle and we see effortless chic and style, but what we don't see is that that selfie you would love to look like was actually their 421st attempt at that shot. We don't see a lot of what really goes on in someones life, which is totally normal - but we can be tricked in to thinking those hard days don't exist for that perfect Instagrammer or Vlogger.
For my dissertation at Uni I did a research project into the affects Instagram has on self-esteem in teenage girls. My findings confirmed what I had assumed - comparison was soo high! Even when they were aware that posts were edited and did not show real life, they feel victim to the "they're much better at make-up than me", "they're much more confident", "they have so many friends and no-one really likes me".
Sound familiar? I'm no longer a teenager but I definitely still have my moments...
2.Who Am I?Not to get all educational and boring, but from toddlers we have been going through moral development - this is where we figure out what is "right" or "wrong", where we form our beliefs or values, our principles and our behaviours - and did you know during our teenage years our moral development brings us to the stage where our biggest question is "Who am I?!
If you're a teenager and you're reading this perhaps you totally get it and you're really aware that you've been asking yourself that question for a while now, or perhaps you didn't know and now a few things make sense... this is the stage we figure out what we have to offer the world, what part we have to place, and naturally to assess that we compare.
Comparison will always be part of how we judge things; to compare against something else. But let's learn to love ourselves a little better on the way to figuring out exactly who we are, and what we have to give to the world.
Remember we are all figuring it out and the truth is we all have something incredible and unique to offer, and sometimes that comparison or strive for perfection only sends us in the wrong direction to finding out what, or who, we really are.
It took me 5 outfits and a stress fit later to decide on an outfit, to then sit in John Lewis Cafe doing some work for 2 hours where no-one cared about what I looked like... I'd like to start using my time for better things...
Yours faithfully,
Jen
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