What Is Happening to the Human Body on Instagram?
We, as a society, are deeply troubled with our bodies. Nearly everybody has something on their body that makes them feel insecure — be it their belly, height, or facial hair. We constantly compare ourselves to those we perceive as conventionally attractive and desire their looks.
With the rise of social media, this comparison is becoming than ever before. Anyone can create and broadcast their entire life on a public platform to thousands of strangers without having to be talented or famous. Influencers — a new breed of celebrities consisting of amateur model-turned-brand ambassadors or lifestyle coaches — emerged from this development. And through these online spaces, they are perpetuating a new type of body dysmorphia that at its extreme can only be described as a caricature taken to be the perfect body.
The Kardashian family (especially Kylie Jenner) and singer Nicki Minaj are some of the celebrities who pioneered the reshaping of the human body on social media in the past half-decade. Scrolling through their Instagram page, one cannot help but be struck by how exaggerated and artificial-looking certain parts of their features are on the photos. Yet there is a sense, from the hundreds of thousands of likes and comments gushing about their beauty — most of which from teenagers and young adults — that this is what perfection looks like nowadays.
And the multiplying number of up-and-coming Instagram models who copy these very features in their own online images prove that if you want to attract followers and likes, this is what people want to see on their feeds. The enlarged, bubble-like buttocks and breasts, the tiny waistline, the smooth, tanned skin, not to mention the same style of makeup that emphasizes big, pouty lips and tiny nose bridges all combine to form a package of surreal, almost cartoonish body structures that shock at first but becomes progressively more convincing as you browse.
THE FILTERED FACE
We are probably all familiar with the dog ears and flower crowns that many young girls put on their selfies on Facebook or SnapChat — their platform of origin. These filters use Artificial Intelligence to read the image feed of a camera to identify the borders of our faces and the position of our eyes, noses, mouths, etc. Having constructed a “map” of the face, the filter places the animated dog ears or flower crown in the appropriate position on top of our head.
Sounds innocent enough. But another unspoken function of these filters — arguably much more important to the user — is that they also change how your face looks. Specifically, the AI also smooths out and lightens your skin, widens your eyes, and narrows your jaw. What results is a beautified version of yourself, with glowing complexion free of acne or blemishes and large, sparkly eyes. Of course, there are the dog ears and nose, but they are just accessories to complement your new, digitally altered look.
And for many young people, filters like these — dog ears or not — have become an essential step before uploading a portrait to their social media. This is evidenced by the fact the FaceTune — a mobile app for, as the name suggested, editing faces in photos — was the fifth best-selling paid app on the iOS app store in 2015. Once one has trained themselves enough to detect the effects, they would be able to see these filters applied to young people’s selfies everywhere on Instagram and Facebook.
Given this powerful tool, combined with makeup, the new perfect face on social media possesses unrealistic facial structures. Tiny nose — in some cases even invisible save for the nostrils, large eyes, plump lips, and not a single pore or wrinkle in sight: that is the pseudo-reality of what “beauty” looks like to the community of Instagram models and their followers.
Ironically, newer smartphones constantly come out with better and better selfie cameras, which produce pictures with sharper definition. So, the result is a sort of hyperrealistic humanoid depiction, unsettling yet persuasive.
THE LIQUIFIED BODY
“Liquify” is a tool in PhotoShop that morphs and shifts the image, and most popularly used to edit body shapes. In the rise of the caricature perfect body, ironically, the term “liquify” accurately captures the ambition of its users to transform themselves in the digital sphere. In the more extreme examples of body editing on Instagram, the lines are pushed to unrealistic proportions, as though they wish to become liquid, or at least malleable, so that they can pinch and pull at all the right places into something inhuman but at the same time the pinnacle of desirability.
But why are we so fixated on making ourselves look a certain way in photos? The justification used to be the conventional wisdom: “The camera adds ten pounds.” This has to do with how most cameras have wide-set lenses that expand the middle of the photo and make the subject look bigger than they are. Thus, you may think you look awesome in the mirror but when you see the candid shots your friends take of you afterward, you look misshapen.
Additionally, our eyes are also capable of depth perception because they are analogous to two cameras working simultaneously to bring out the 3D effect of the visual world seen from our perspective. Photo cameras, on the other hand, only have one lens and therefore objects in photographs tend to look flat compared to real life. Aside from lighting, makeup (like we addressed above) and photo editing tools help compensate for this flatness and enhance the curves of the body or the bone structure of the face.
Of course, the bigger reason is simply that we see photos of people that supposedly look beautiful, and that makes us want to look like them, too, no matter how unattainable those bodies seem to be.
Compensation has thus come to be overcompensation. A large and ever-growing community of Instagram models and their followers are heading towards a spiral of making their waists smaller, their butts and breasts bigger, their legs more toned, and their skin more and more unrealistically smooth on their Instagram.
There is also the controversy surrounding whether or not these personalities have employed cosmetic surgery to achieve these looks, which we will not discuss here. Regardless of whether they did, it does not change the consequences of the representation of their bodies to the audience. The troubling part, however, is when the models claim that they got their figures naturally thanks to working out and dieting, while denying any body-enhancing tools, instilling shame into their followers for not being as hard-working or diligent.
BODY DYSMORPHIA ON THE RISE
Even more problematic, children are getting access to the internet — and by extension social media — at a younger and younger age. The effect of the caricature perfect body on their self-esteem is increasingly troubling. Several studies have shown that exposure to social media negatively correlates with a person’s body image and self-esteem, especially women and adolescents.5
Teenagers have reported that they only share images and information that make them look better than they actually are. To young people, social media is a battlefield to compete in who has the most beautiful picture, the most likes, and the highest follower count. From the beginning, this is an unfair fight: when we see somebody on social media, we see then at their best (and sometimes that “best” is not even real), and we compare their best to our average — explained Heather Senior Monroe, a clinical social worker at the Newport Academy mental health treatment center. Summer Andrews, 18, told The Guardian in 2015:
“I do feel insecure if I see girls who look prettier than me, or if they post really pretty pictures, and I know I won’t look as good in any that I post. I do feel pressure to look good in the photos I put up. I don’t feel anxious about not getting enough likes on a photo but if it doesn’t get enough likes, I will take it down.”
Alarmingly, body issues may start even before children hit puberty. A report titled “Children, Teens, Media, and Body Image” by Common Sense Media shows that children as young as seven years old begin to display dieting behaviors associated with media consumption. Girl Scout Research Institute found in another report in 2010 that nearly half (48%) of 13- to 17-year-old girls wish they were “as skinny as magazine models.” While social media does not directly cause Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), it certainly triggers and exacerbates the symptoms. Weight-related BDD is linked to eating disorders that stunt physical and mental development in children and cripple adults’ body functions.
Some parts of the internet are pushing back. In r/InstagramReality — a rising Subreddit — members post such photos and point out where the models have photoshopped or filtered themselves to the extreme. Redditors, aside from expressing their astonishment at the difference between the altered bodies in the photos to real life, comment that this sub has provided them with some sanity from the craze.
“Before this sub, I would have been green with envy of these curves.” — wrote user u/seinfieldyadayada to caption a picture of a pair of Instagram-famous twin models flaunting their voluptuous body shapes in revealing outfits — “Now, I know it ain’t nothin’ but some terrible editing.” Another user commented humorously, “This sub has helped me feel better about having ribs lol.”12
The sub takes much of its material from the Instagram page @bealty.false. Set up by a 20-year-old Russian girl, @beauty.false put edited and unedited photos of popular Instagram models side-by-side for comparisons, many of which are quite jarring, but sobering.
Seeing these comparisons reminds us that most humans are not supposed to have literally hourglass-shaped bodies. Even though most of these models indeed have slim and toned bodies in real life, they are nowhere near the caricatured figures posted on social media.
FIGHTING THE CARICATURE
The fastest solution to the poison of the caricature perfect body is to delete your social media. Corporations and the celebrity industry benefit from perpetuating unrealistic body images because they uphold the idea that if you just buy the right diet shakes, the right clothing, the right makeup, and follow the right people, you will eventually be rewarded with the attractiveness and enviable lifestyle that they display. Taking the drastic measure of cutting off an avenue of their advertising (and that is exactly what those images are doing — advertising — be it products or themselves) is one step to breaking free from the hypnosis they impose on your brains.
Nevertheless, this is a complex phenomenon. Moreover, it is a virus that’s rapidly spreading its grasp amongst children and teenagers — those most vulnerable to psychological manipulations. The social media influencer industry possesses a wealth of technology and knowledge about the human mind that helps them capture their audience in a sort of Stockholm Syndrome. Believing that the caricature body image is real and attractive makes us miserable with self-doubt and jealousy, but we blame ourselves for that misery, for not working out hard enough to achieve it.
Detoxifying body images has to begin with being critical of what we see on social media and frequently building self-awareness. Parents and educators need to be active in initiating conversations with children to help them distance themselves emotionally from this kind of content, as well as figure out the non-superficial values that they can be proud of.
But a real upheaval of the reign of the caricature body image can only happen when those in power — politicians and industry leaders — take a stance to fight against it. In 2017, France began banning excessively skinny models from working in the fashion industry. Such a measure may seem radical, but it sets an example of where a line should be drawn between profits and the preservation of human dignity and wellbeing.
