The Pervasiveness of Pinterest
Having not been actively participating on social media, while simultaneously trying to unpack a lot of the BS I absorbed that created untrue stories about myself, it's like all of a sudden I've been given a new set of blue blocker glasses to view my scrolling with.
After searching "DIY wall art", within 9 pins I noticed a "lose 10 pounds" ad. Two thumb scrolls after that: "get rid of your mom pooch". Another few scrolls: "the best pilates workout from anywhere".
I literally didn't search for anything remotely close to body or fitness and there it was. In my face about how enticing it is to change my body. All sold to me by thin, athletic-looking white female-presenting bodies.
I know myself pretty well at this point, at least most days it feels like that, and if consuming content on social media was a regular, daily occurrence for me, I don't think I would have blatantly noticed content like that. Which means I would just be subconsciously absorbing it, internally filing it away as little seeds that will eventually sprout into more untrue stories about myself.
After that 15-minute scroll on Pinterest, I was in my bathroom later that evening. I was fresh out of the shower and moving about in the nude, as one does when I stopped in front of the mirror. I turned sideways and assessed my reflection. My internal thought train went like this...
Hmmm. My stomach isn't so flat.
What would it be like to pull this in?
I should probably be maintaining this better.
WAIT.
NO.
We don't talk like this anymore sister.
Someone else's voice and opinion does not get to speak for this body. TYSM.
Quinn grew and lived in this able mid-section.
Thank you body for all you do and the actual life you create.
Nice tush.
It was that easy for me to fall into a pattern that had me looking at and talking to my body in a negative way. I had to actively interrupt myself to get off that thought train before it rocketed me into the abyss of self-loathing.
An article from the WSJ back in March (subscription required), addresses the observation that weight-loss and aging ads have in fact been taking over our social media feeds. Health and wellness marketers spent $1.13 billion on Instagram ads in 2022, up 9.4% from the prior year.
And even being old enough and experienced with social media to understand the way the machine works, it still has a torrid effect on us...
“The constant flow of ads and images triggers those weak spots in all of us,” says Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center, an independent research organization.
”The anxiety and desire to look younger, thinner, fitter, better made-up or more fashionable gets continually reinforced by our desire to find out how, sending us to the very information sources that triggered our anxiety in the first place,” Dr. Rutledge adds. “It’s an endless loop unless we stop it.”
You know what's really hard and takes a lot of self-study? Stopping the endless loop. Because yes, I do want some damn inspiration from a Pinterest project. And I need to Google things from time to time, aka quite often. We are living in a world where participation on the Internet (even when actively staying off social media) is in most cases essential. I mean, here I am electronic mailing you via the interwebs and I love this form of communication and connection.
So how do we possibly reroute this loop and our internal thought patterns? That's a big ole can of worms, but what I do have is a recommendation and a hack.
The recommendation is Sonya Renee Taylor's book The Body Is Not An Apology. It's filled with radical self-love and liberation tools. I listened to this one, narrated by the author, and it was full of capital-R Revelations.
She was also on a podcast episode of We Can Do Hard Things in January of this year and so much of what she said were major lightbulb moments for me. She speaks to the relationship to our bodies in the larger context of what our societal systems have embedded within us…
"I bought the lie and that keeps me from actually tackling the other shame that is the manifestation of the lie I bought. And then we’re in a loop.
An entire world from the time I emerged from whatever womb I emerged from was like, here is the lie we expect for you to believe. Of course I bought it, of course. And as an act of defiance and liberation, I do not have to keep listening to it. I don’t have to. That’s the freedom. The freedom is recognizing that you don’t have to keep it, that it’s not yours and you don’t have to keep it."
The hack is from the writer of the above-mentioned WSJ piece, Julia Jargon. She shares three tactical ways to take action on your smartphone to limit how ads show up in your feed:
Adjust your preferences. You can choose topics you’d like to see less of, such as politics, social issues, as well as beauty and personal care. Go into your settings, tap on ads, then tap on ad topics. You can tap on any topic and select “See less.”
Hide ads. Tap in the upper-right corner of an ad and a screen will pop up giving you the option to hide the ad. If you tap on that, Instagram won’t show you that ad again and, for a while, will display fewer ads from that company.
Curb off-platform tracking. You can tell Instagram not to use off-platform activity for ads. From settings, tap on ads, then tap “Activity information from ad partners.”
If this resonates with you in any way, or if you have your own tools, recommendations, or hacks for navigating the murky landscape of the internet, I'd love for you to connect via email.
I also want to say directly… However you navigate the internet and social media is totally ok. And however you ingest and respond to content is about what works best for you. We are all doing the best we can in a world that can feel really heavy and oppressive. You are enough.
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