Girls and Black Mirrors.

Every day it’s something new in the adult-hood. Every. Single. Day. Am I right?

Especially when your adulthood revolves around the raising of a whole new generation of adults. Now, I know I’ve been writing A LOT about parenting lately. I’ll get back to my supplements and skincare verbal diarrhea soon enough but….

There is so much going on in the world right now that directly affects our kids and makes our jobs as parents, teachers, coaches, aunts, uncles, grandparents…you name it….SO. MUCH. HARDER.

….and so….today’s post is inspired by social media and how I see it affecting my daughter and her peers.

In order not to be called sexist, I’ll preface this by saying that my son and all of the boys I know don’t seem to have the same relationship with social media that the girls I know do. They tend to get lost in gaming, memes, and other crass and irreverent stuff. I can only speak from my own observations.

But the girls….

Well, they have a different story.

I knew what was coming and for years was so good about keeping my kids off of screens and social media. Until middle school happened. Actually, my son got his first phone at age 14…his sister at almost 12. All of a sudden, in middle school, she was one of a minuscule percentage of kids without phones, and even some of the teachers started requested the kids to use certain apps etc. So….their dad got them phones for Christmas.

And then everything started changing.

As a parent of young kids (or a non parent) it is so incredibly easy to say or think you’ll never allow your kids to do (fill in the blank here). The reality is that many of our idealisms about raising kids get thrown by the wayside when life throws in what seems like cruelly calculated monkey wrenches.

Enter pandemic time.

Once Covid came around I found myself floundering for ways to keep my kids in touch with their friends, and with some sense of normalcy. Social media was one of the main ways the girls kept in touch. The boys were on Discord playing GTA or whatever the game du jour was.

At first it seemed innocuous enough…but them came the comparisons. When we were growing up we only saw “all the stuff” that the “rich kids” had if we were invited over for a birthday party or playdate. Now it’s constant.

It’s an all day, every day, international keeping up with the Joneses.

I know adult women who can’t handle this….so how do we expect our girls to?

Do I set limits still? I do. Sometimes I get busy. Sometimes I get stressed. Sometimes I forget. So she scrolls too much.

She sees everyone who she thinks is prettier, skinnier, more successful, luckier, has better clothes, nicer hair, better skin, a bigger house.

And even though she is smart as a whip, beautiful, talented, and has so much to offer, she falls for that trap of discontent.

Now 13 year old girls are in a league of their own when it comes to mood swings and emotional rollercoasters in general. Add this shit in and it’s a recipe for disaster.

My kids talk to me about all of this still…thank God. But I’m privy to some of the posts other girls her age put up for public display and it’s frightening…and they suffer so much when they don’t get enough likes or comments….or someone says something cruel.

I hate this so much for them.

Social media has its benefits. Build a brand. Build a business. Keep in touch with family and friends across the globe.

Yet its become this beast of comparisons and unhappiness when improperly used.

One of my best friends sent me a post she found on Instagram that outlined a study done on a group of teenage girls. They were shown a photograph of themselves and then asked what, if anything, they would do to change the way they looked. They all ended up creating caricature versions of themselves. They essentially all wanted to look like Snapchat filters.

There was a challenge going around not long ago where girls were posting their videos asking their followers to tell them what they should do to “look prettier”. When my daughter showed me some of these videos, my heart sank.

She, gratefully, was too astute to make one of herself….but the comments made on some of the other girls’ videos were heartbreaking. Amongst a few random “OMG you’re so pretty!”, “WTF I wouldn’t change anything!” and the requisite emojis, came a lot of criticism, cutting down, and suggestions….like “you need to get your eyebrows done, you need fake eyelashes, you need a nose job, you need lip filler, you need to wear makeup, your skin looks bad”….and on and on an on…..

WHAT THE F****

…and this isn’t hard to believe when grown women are asking plastic surgeons to turn them into what they see in filters too.

Listen, if you have a feature that makes you miserable and you want to change it…then by all means to what makes you happy…..but this is far from what I’m talking about and what is happening.

At the age of 13 I didn’t give a crap about how I looked. Had no idea what nose jobs and lip filler were, barely washed my face, did not own or wear a stitch of makeup, and I was happier for it.

Girls and adult women want to look like cartoon characters.

Jessica Rabbit is “goals” now???….except this generation probably doesn’t know who Jessica is?

I know I’m rambling, but this topic is a heated one for me. I worked across the globe as a professional model for over 15 years. What we did as models was nowhere near as distorted as what social media is doing when it comes to the current concept of beauty.

Modeling was a job. It still is for the real models, but I’m talking the hashtag generation here. Now we just have a crass display of overly edited girls and women claiming to be what they are not….narcissism on a level that has never existed before. (For God’s sake, I saw a Facebook post of a missing child the other day and the only pictures of her on that post were Snapchat filtered. WHAT HAVE WE BECOME??).

We had airbrushing and photoshop for scars, blemishes, tired eyes…..now little girls are learning how to use liquify tools to change their entire faces and bodies. The liquify tool and filters then turn into tens of thousands of dollars at the surgeon’s office. We all know about body dysmorphia….now enters facial dysmorphia. And if we don’t talk to our girls….it is going to f*** them up.

Teen years are awkward. It’s a rite of passage to look like an absolute asshat. I can dig out my yearbook pictures and prove that I was barely a step above Kenny Powers with a massive forehead, mullet, and absolute androgyny before it was cool.

It didn’t kill me.

I didn’t wear shorts for years because people made fun of me for having chicken legs.

It didn’t depress me.

I grew up poor. Zero privilege here. Government cheese and hand me downs. Government housing, and free school lunches. Weeks when my parents only had $20 for groceries to last 7 days.

It didn’t ruin me.

I also didn’t have to compare myself to anyone online with the flick of a wrist and tap of a finger.

Even the girls in the magazines then had a more fresh, attainable, realness to their beauty.

…and no one was unboxing or bragging or giving tours of their homes.

We had Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous to watch to see that kind of stuff…but the owners of that materialism were all celebrities. It was fantasy and unattainable. It was on once a week.

Social media makes it seems like that fantasy is the norm. IT’S NOT.

So what the hell do we do?

Yes, we can take away the social media…..but the reality of complete removal when they don’t even get to go to school is an onerous one. We can limit it….but that crap is still there whether they’re on for 5 minutes or 5 hours.

My thoughts revolve around keeping the lines of communication very open with my girl. Reminded her constantly that what she sees online is NOT REAL.

and

No one looks like that ALL the time (if at all, really). Hell, I partied with VS Angels back in my day and even those girls don’t look like they do in pictures.

and

That as women we have WAY MORE to offer than just a picture. All the models I worked with still went on to finish college or start businesses (sometimes both) and have created interesting and fulfilling lives for themselves.

and

If you want to use social media, use it to showcase a talent or something you can offer to make the world a better place. Pretty is a dime a dozen…especially now. You can filter yourself into anything…but you cannot filter yourself into a person of intelligence, character, or integrity.

and

All the makeup, fillers, and procedures in the world won’t make you happy if you don’t have a healthy mindset. If you don’t know how to cultivate happiness within YOURSELF….which is a lesson we all are constantly learning, I think.

Neither do all the brand name clothes, vacations, and McMansions.

Someday these apps will be replaced by others and then what happens to the popular kids?

The whole hype house, virtue signaling, “challenge” obsessed movement, which I think was probably heralded by reality TV shows….watch out for that stuff. It’s vacuous and kids are drawn to it like moths to a flame.

Talk to them about how it’s JUST entertainment and then turn them on to things with more substance. Good music, literature, art, theater, science….there is so much out there. It’s interesting. It’ll make them interesting adults.

I bought my kids a series of dyspotian novels from my youth…1984, A Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451. We’re reading it together..it takes time…but it’s worth it.

Use the online world to learn, research, discover new things you’re interested in. Get into baking, anthropology….hell, even get into politics.

….but this vain, vapid, materialistic popularity contest is not worth our sanity and mental health.

As adults…please...let’s be very aware of what our kids, especially our girls, are being exposed to. Look at your daughter’s accounts, what they are posting, who they follow, who follows them, and who comments on their stuff. Let’s get together as moms, dads, authority figures and all teach our kids along the same lines…there is strength in numbers.

My girl is only allowed to have private accounts….that will not be changing any time soon. It’s still not enough though.

If you have kids who are not at all into social media then count your blessings. Keep it that way as long as possible. It’s a mess out there…and one more thing…

….I miss the 80’s and 90’s now more than ever.

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