“correcting” my aesthetic for the world
@shri_reads_books, a South Asian bookstagrammer posted on IG about adjusting and moving items in the pictures she takes so that her living space looks like the minimalistic aesthetic that’s popular in the West. An aesthetic that is disconnected from the norms of her culture.
Reading her post made me wonder how much of our living spaces, fashion, culture and even our selves do we allow to be altered, often of our own doing, by what we see online? Do we even know who we truly are when we strip away the filters we put on so we can create a good image for our next post? When does aspiration become erasure?
Although I grew up in a time before social media, I remember that I wasn’t immune to blindly following trends. I didn’t have the internet but I sought them out through other means. The Dolores O’Riordan haircut I had in high school is the greatest symbol of every other trend I followed back in the day. The difference, in my opinion, is that I made more conscious choices about who I was trying to mimic and why. I thought Dolores O’Riordan was so cool (she was and always will be) and I wanted to be her so I started by trying to look like her.
These days, the influences seep into our minds so insidiously through the hours of sliding our thumbs upwards on our phone screens, allowing Instagram’s insidious algorithm to brainwash us via its endless scroll. We know how awful this brainwashing can become (the manosphere, bigotry, looksmaxxing, political hellscapes, flat earthers) but even on a smaller scale, I now step back and question everything that I am. Why am I wearing the clothes I wear? Who am I trying to look like when I do my makeup? Why did I choose to read the books I read? Am I really me or a work in progress for some subconscious ideal?
tags: reasons to get off social media