If you look at a teenage girl’s Instagram page, the pictures are perfect—or at least they look that way. Her skin is smooth, her eyes sparkle and her waist is enviably small. If you open up the comments section, her followers echo the same sentiment:
“You’re so stunning!”
“Literal perfection.”
“I wish I looked like you.”
But the truth is, she doesn’t look like herself. . .she looks like an improved version of herself. Behind the screen, the photo you’re seeing was meticulously edited. Her skin was airbrushed with an app. Her waist was slimmed with a few swipes of her finger. Her eyes and teeth were whitened in three taps.
This is the world we currently live in: a world where editing apps like Facetune and Photoshop make it effortless to entirely alter everything about one’s appearance. This phenomenon blurs the lines between fantasy and reality, and the effects can be incredibly damaging.
According to a 2023 article by Psychology Today, nearly 90% of women under the age of 20 admit to altering their appearance in photos before sharing them online. What once required expensive software and professional skills is now accessible to anyone with a smartphone.
The consequences? A generation of teens trapped in a cycle of unrealistic expectations and self-doubt. When one compares themself to an image of someone that isn’t real, the person that they see in the mirror is no longer enough. The more girls see edited images online, the worse they will feel about themselves, and the more likely they are to start editing their own photos. The cycle is vicious.
This insecurity is compounded by other forms of edited images we’re surrounded by every day in advertising and in our culture. While the images that AI can generate at this point in time may be crude and recognizable, one must wonder what future generations of technology will be able to produce in terms of deceivingly realistic images of people.
So, what can we do right now? For starters, put down the editing apps. Resist the urge to “fix” what doesn’t need fixing. Embrace photos that reflect your real, unfiltered self—the one with freckles, flyaways and everything else that makes you uniquely you.
It’s not easy to go against a culture that is obsessed with perfection. But every time we choose authenticity over airbrushing, we get closer to a world where being real is valued more than being perfect.
Because here’s the truth: The version of yourself that you see in the mirror is enough.
