Perfect Girls Only Exist On Instagram
By Aly McHenry
Perfect girls have perfect hair and wear perfect clothes to fit their perfect bodies. They have perfect boyfriends and get perfect grades and they always wear their makeup perfectly.
Perfect girls post perfect selfies. Their skin will glow beautifully with the filter they carefully chose and their eyes will shine brighter than any pair of eyes you’ve ever seen before. Their smile will look happier than any smile you’ve ever had and you’ll like their picture but hate yourself. Then to make yourself feel better, you’ll post a perfect selfie of your own. But in your mind, looking perfect looks nothing like you, so you slap a filter on it and stare at it until you get enough likes to make yourself feel loved because you want to feel perfect too.
Perfect girls have perfect boyfriends. Perfect boyfriends who get them the most thoughtful gifts and always stare at them in pictures like they hung the moon. Cameras capture every beautiful moment of their perfect relationship. There’s always a camera around when he calls her beautiful like it’s her name, but there’s never one insight on those nights he’s calling her a bitch. Camera’s don’t exist at 2AM when they’re screaming in each other’s face about how they should have broken up a long time ago and a picture is never snapped when she’s on her knees bawling her eyes out as she begs him to just love her back.
Perfect girls have perfect accomplishments. Perfect girls always get perfect grades and then they always get their dream job. Perfect girls always have perfect moments in their lives to always be broadcasted on social media. Beautiful photos are shown to the world to let everyone know how well they’re really doing, but sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they’re sitting at work and questioning if they are really where they want to be. Sometimes they’re at home because they were just too depressed to even get out of bed that day, and sometimes they wish they could post a picture of themselves with their life looking less than perfect because they just need somebody to know that things aren’t perfect all the time and that sometimes things don’t even come close to being perfect. Sometimes things don’t even come close to feeling okay.
Perfect girls have perfect lives, but those lives only live on Instagram. Because perfection can never be maintained through an unfiltered universe. Perfection is only seen on a screen and only after getting a million chances to get it right. But the thing is, there’s nothing wrong with not being perfect.
There’s nothing wrong with the first picture you took. There’s nothing ugly about a selfie without a filter and there’s nothing more beautiful than the imperfections that make you who you are. Humans weren’t meant to be edited. They were meant to be real. They were meant to make mistakes and they were built to survive any hard times they face.
And we will, but the shame is, that our followers on Instagram will never see it. We’ll make them believe they’re wrong for not being perfect because as perfect as we may see them, they see us as perfect too. And that’s when we’ll realize, we’re all just as guilty of pretending to be as perfect as the perfect girls do.