Narratives

Peer Pressure with Eknoor

Eknoor is a freshman college student who uses a variety of social media platforms.

She constantly sees how smaller bodies are most represented. Eknoor notes that nowadays, the media has become more inclusive than what it was before, but it is still mainly skinny girls with light skin who are commonly deemed as most beautiful by society. Being a student, she has come to the realization that it is not her job to focus on her appearance as much as models and influencers do. Eknoor is starting to be more comfortable in her own skin, but seeing the repetition of a narrow representation on the media still takes a negative toll on her, and others’ mental health. She finds inspiration from influencers who do not necessarily fit into the thin body standard, like Lizzo because “she still rocks everything that she wears and is so confident”. Eknoor realizes that FaceTune is commonly used on social media to portray one’s best self. However, she feels that Photoshop used in magazines and mainstream media is much more harmful, especially to younger generations because they don’t know the difference between what is altered and what is real.

Being an Asian American from India, Eknoor considers herself to be barely represented in the media. She explains how she sees white representation the most, and now Black representation is becoming more apparent, but there still is a lack of Asian representation. It makes the minority groups, like her feel left out. The small amount of Indian representation that there is, is not enough. Eknoor has worked on changing her mindset to be healthier, she says, “I am the way I am, and I look good. I’m not saying I look perfect, but I don’t look bad”. Even though her mindset has changed, she still feels down at times. She notes how she goes through phases when she changes her eating habits and increases her physical activity to change her appearance to fit the unrealistic skewed body expectation.

Influencer Impact with Raegan

Raegan is a 19-year-old woman who attends Indiana University as a freshman. She is an active user of social media.

Based on an interview with Raegan Leonard, she is affected by social media in a way that she believes she must be skinny to be pretty. The information that was gathered is that Raegan follows “Princess PiaMia, Natalie Connor, Kassidy Thompson, Tana Mongeau, Kendall Jenner, Kylie Jenner, and Becca Moore”. I researched all of these influencers by looking them up on either TikTok or Instagram and noticed something in common. They all have a huge following and their content mostly contains posts of either flaunting their flawless looks or their bodies. These types of posts is what Raegan looks for when going on social media because these influencers are people she looks up to. She looks up to these influencers because they are “extremely pretty” and have “body types that are ideal”. Not only are these body types “ideal” for her, she describes these body types as “skinny”. She also noticed how all of these influencers always look perfect in every one of their posts, which is not realistic for any person, specifically women.

The way Raegan looks up to these influencers she acknowledges and admits that she is definitely influenced by them. She is initially influenced because she believes that because they have skinny bodies, they are beautiful and someone for her to look up to. She never mentions the reason she looks up to them is any sort of talent or hobby that she is interested in, but rather the person’s looks and bodies that she is intrigued by and wants to look like. Raegan was transparent in the fact that she believes she is affected daily by her social media intake. When she wakes up in the morning, she checks her social media on her phone (as many women in her age group do) and sees the women that she follows. She states that she will “not eat”, “feel guilty” about eating, or “reduce” what she eats. She also will feel compelled and “force” herself to the gym thinking this will help her feel better about herself and allow her to get towards her “ideal” body, which was stated to be skinny, such as Kendall Jenner is, however this is unrealistic for the majority of women our age.

Social Media with Christine

Christine is a 19-year-old freshman attending Indiana University. She has been an active social media user from a young age.

Christine described her view on body image before using social media as essentially nonexistent. She was young when she got social media, so before that, body image wasn’t something she ever thought about. It wasn’t until she downloaded and joined social media platforms that she saw how body image and beauty standards were a huge part of life. Social media is the reason Christine became aware of her own body image, and that it was even a topic or issue. Just because these platforms had the ability to change and negatively affect how people everywhere view themselves and their body, Christine notes that she tries to keep positive and stay conscious of her self worth so that her view on herself does not change. She notes that she does not let anything other than herself determine her self-worth, so that the only difference in her own body image before and after social media is the fact that she is now aware of it all. When asked about what social platform is the most toxic when it comes to body image, Christine answered with Instagram. She notes that Instagram is often used to show off looks and bodies, and she recognizes that even though there is nothing wrong with that, some influencers and celebrities tweak how they look using photoshop. This is when body image issues can get worse, and people can send harmful messages and set unrealistic expectations for bodies. Christine also says it harms both girls and boys. Christine also goes on to mention that Tiktok is also toxic. Tiktok is a video-sharing app where people post all kinds of content. Christine thinks that trends on Tiktok that have to do with how you look or showing off your body can be harmful and hurt the people who view it. Christine ends the interview by saying that trends like that can be competitive and detrimental to body image.

Being Connected with Olivia

Olivia is a 16-year-old girl attending Loyola Academy. She is an active social media user.

During the interview with Olivia, she explained how she felt and how the use of social media has affected her. Based on the questions I asked her she gave honest answers. She stated how she used social media every day. She uses it multiple times per day and stated how it has affected her body and mental health. After talking about how she follows the Kardashians through social media. I asked her how following a celebrity family like the Kardashians she stated how it has helped her become more confident. She says how she doesn’t feel like she needs to have the best body to feel pretty or fit in. She stated how the Kardashians enforce the same principles but supporting body positivity. The message that was conveyed through the Kardashians is also following your passion and you shouldn’t let others judge you. The Kardashian family is not an average family, not only are they wealthy, but also do very different things together and socially. After the interview, Olivia emphasized that they do different things because they follow their passion. Olivia tries to incorporate this into her life. Olivia did say how following them on social media made her buy lipstick created by them. She uses social media to keep up with others that live a long distance from her. She also uses social media to learn and keep up with professional sports. Influencers don’t affect their way of thinking mentally, but she stated how they often give her outfit ideas. Olivia's thought process when posting.