I pose to you the ultimate first world problem: Selfies are ruining us!

Wait, let me explain before you finish that eye roll…

Selfies. All those selfies. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good selfie. There are many uses for them! For example, if you want to send out a little reminder to a certain someone about how delicious you look from that great angle with the amazing lighting, 78% contrast, 56% brightness, 3 layers of makeup, skin blur and ‘Walden’ filter. Those overly edited selfies look so beautiful, yet are warping our senses of reality. Still sounding stupid? Ok, ok, stay with me…

 I’m a huge fan of make up gurus and YouTube entertainers in general, so I’ve lost myself in many a useful video such as ‘American Tries Japanese Candy’ and ‘How to Netflix and Chill.’ There’s literally a tutorial for anything. I mean ANYTHING. I’ve sat and watched Trisha Paytas binge on KFC for half an hour of my life…It’s called ‘Mukbang’, seriously get onto it if you want to feel better about your eating habits.

Anyway back to the point I was trying to make…During my intellectually stimulating adventures on YouTube, I stumbled across ‘How I Edit My Selfies’ videos. Again, a very important life skill and thank God that there are thousands of videos out there to help us with it. So yes, I am not embarrassed to admit that I edit my selfies with a bit of lighting adjustment and then I add a filter from Instagram if I’m looking especially pasty. But these girls…These girls take things to the next level. They use multiple apps to edit their photos. I’m talking four or five different apps, layering filter upon filter, casually chiseling noses, chins and cheek bones; smoothing out pores and pimples…Man, I’m exhausted just thinking about it! Basically they come out looking nothing like they do in real life and they’re pretty bloody happy about it.

 Meanwhile, my gigantic pores and I are scrolling through my newsfeed wondering why we don’t look like that. How dare you have texture, skin! How dare you! Why is my nose not chiseled to perfection? Those artificially plumped up lips-everyone’s got them! Do I need them too? Why do her teeth glow in the dark? Her hair is like a decadent chocolate waterfall!…Ahh! My flat hair and I need a break! I’m a pretty secure girl, but what about those of us who feel the pressure a little more? It’s a dangerous and sad world to be in, if you strive for this sort of unattainable perfection.

 I don’t mean to be a bitch but…When we see you in real life, we’re going to see the REAL you anyway! I still think that you’re beautiful with your textured skin, that mole, those freckles. We’ve all had and seen pimples so many times before so don’t be shy about yours! We all know that we ourselves are not perfect, so why do we expect others to be? Let’s take the pressure off of others and ourselves! If you look up from your phone and out the window, you’ll realize that there’s more to life. It’s OK to post selfies- and here’s to many more! But let’s stay true to ourselves as we do so. The world is so beautiful with its perfect imperfections and so are you.

 Lots of love,

 Magda x