This is the generation of authenticity. We want it how it is. No Photoshop, no secrets, no hidden ingredients. All I have to do is mention "All About That Bass" to get the song ringing in your head. Or mention the fact that Sports Illustrated just used their first plus size model to advertise, using the hashtag #CurvesinBikinis. Or mention the fact that so many people nowadays (more than half the people I know) are on some kind of diet, for health reasons or by choice. We want the real deal.
Or, so we'd like to think.
I've been thinking a lot about this lately. For a while, I truly thought I was part of the authentic generation, no paradoxes. But the deep pondering revealed to me that I'm not. Instead, we are the authentic fakes.
We live in a world completely saturated and permeated by social media and technology-- a world where people drop their perfectly working iPhone 5s's to get the new iPhone 6 or 6 plus just to say they have it; a world where selfies and worthless filters rule on Instagram; a world where two friends sitting next to each other text instead of speaking; a world were people who are so incredibly connected to everything and everyone online but never stop feeling lonely in real life.
Now, I'm not saying that I'm not on Instagram and I don't use filters and I don't text too much, but what I am saying is that there is a problem here. We can claim to want straight-up authenticity in one breath but in the next submit to the shallowness of Twitter and Facebook.
What happened to integrity? What happened to being one person to every face you see? What happened to valuing a person by their character instead of their looks? What happened to advertising that sold based on wittiness and humor and not sex?
People claim that they want to detox their bodies, but what about their heads? Your mind is a thing of beauty, and this world is slowly deteriorating it. When I was younger, I ran around all summer without shoes on, came home every day to a bucket of water sitting on the deck with a towel to scrub the layers of dirt off my feet, and wore the same clothes for days. Now, girls way younger than I was are being forced to grow up too quickly, are shoved into a world they are not prepared for in any way. To all the girls that started their lives in beauty pageants, my heart breaks for you, because from the beginning, all you saw was the beauty is everything. And how does that prepare you for the world now? A world that screams "be authentic but also be beautiful and sexy and you'll only ever get a guy if you're blond, skinny and a size 2 but everyone is perfect so be yourself!"
Do you see the problem now?
