Beauty is Only Skin Deep

I remember being horrified a few years ago when a coworker told me a chilling but apparently common story. Her thirteen-year-old niece had posted several photos of herself on social media along with the caption: rate me. As instructed, her peers cast their opinions of her images in number form, none terribly high. So she decided she was ugly and worthless. The resulting emotional devastation led to attempts at self harm followed by hospitalization. I’ve never met this child but was heartbroken for her and also for her family, who desperately wanted this girl to love herself as much as they did. I don’t know how she is doing today, but I have thought about her many times, hoping she has the kind of peace that comes from recognizing one’s self-worth. But that kind of peace often doesn’t arrive until adulthood. Until then, we parents have to remain vigilant in helping our kids avoid falling into traps set by this new digital world we didn’t grow up in and are often unfamiliar with.

Not that I am Luddite by any means. I love social media and admit to groaning when other people post photos of me that I didn’t personally curate. While I have no use for filters, which I’ve always thought give people a somewhat anime quality, I do make a face in pictures that my husband calls the “middle-aged smile.” It seems I open my eyes wider than is natural in order to avoid the appearance of crow’s feet in photos. I don’t even realize that I do this until I see the pictures. The result is as charming as it sounds, and he swears that everyone in my demographic does this. I also suck in my gut, for what it’s worth.

All that said, I really don’t care how I look in pictures —or in reality. I recently went to the grocery store directly after getting a massage, looking as oily as a freshly-opened can of sardines, and I ran into my local senator. Did I care? Nope. Did he? Doubtful. That’s because we’re at a stage in life where the main goal is to get through the day intact. That’s not always easy, hence the massage.

Our children don’t have the luxury of forty-something wisdom and apathy yet, but they do have the luxury of smart phones and constant access to their peers. They also have cameras, apps, filters, group chats, and peer pressure that makes my own adolescence look like the spring awakening scene from Bambi. All of this creates the perfect storm for something called “Snapchat dysmorphia,” which is the feeling of inadequacy after constantly comparing oneself to filtered photos of others and was described recently on radio station WBUR of Boston, a National Public Radio affiliate.

This phenomenon hit home not long ago when I heard my youngest daughter, age thirteen, crying from her room. She didn’t sound sad, but distraught. I ran up the stairs to find my husband already holding her.

“I’m ugly,” she cried. The child whose pink, wrinkly, screaming body was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen from the day I met her, the child who continues to take my breath way with each day of her life, the child I can’t wait to see each morning when she wakes up, hated her hair, her skin, her shape, her eyes—herself. My heart ached.

“Why do you think this? Did somebody tell you that?”

“No. I just am. I can see myself.”

She went on. “I deleted my Instagram because everyone always looked so beautiful and I didn’t. So I went on Snapchat because I still wanted to talk to my friends, but I still felt ugly. Everyone else looks so much better than I do.”

I commended her on deleting her Instagram account and reminded her that posted photos of other people aren’t real; the images are captured instances, using filters, and for each posted photo, probably thirty were taken, rejected, and deleted. And many of the people posting photos of themselves do it because they, too, are unsure of themselves and seek other people’s opinions, hoping they are better than their own. She was unmoved and said she still felt pressure to look a certain way each moment she was in public.

I can remember feeling deeply selfconscious and insecure when I was her age, but not to this level. And I’m still not immune. I recently watched a documentary on social media influencers and thought, “Wow, those people are gorgeous.” Then the film delved into their loneliness and insecurity. When it was over I couldn’t stop thinking of the term, “influencer,” and how my funny, creative daughter was so harmfully influenced by these meaningless snaps of time.

We are still in the woods but working with our child on defining value in terms of depth, sincerity, and honesty. Is she friends with people because of their pictures or because of a connection that goes beyond the screen and into their essence? Is it more fun to laugh with your friends or look at them?

I never realized the importance of monitoring this aspect of digital use. I had always been concerned with secrecy, strangers, and inappropriate content, but all of that distracted me from the harm that was happening despite my diligence. I still have no answer other than to limit the use of phones and engage more in the physical world. After all, no app can improve the sighting of a barred owl or the presence of loved ones. So for now, we will focus more on life as it was meant to be lived: unfiltered. AM