I’m going to write a little piece about using my Samsung Note 9 for a week soon, and to add to this I needed some sample photos. I hadn’t tried a selfie with it yet, so after I did my hair this morning – I took a snap. I whacked it up on Insta. Instead of filtering out the bad, my forehead wrinkles, my patchy stubble, my tired eyes – I kept it as ‘me’ as possible.
As I hurtle towards 40 at scary speed – I’m slowly realising that I actually look okay.
Yeah, I would change a few things, but I’ve accepted that my face and body are going to stay roughly as they are now and I’m cool with that. If I jump back to my 20’s, or my early 30’s I wasn’t really happy with myself. I was fat, I was thin, I had facial hair, I had a sketchy beard. I was changing and evolving, but I didn’t really see it like that. I was miserable being fat, and usually depressed and not eating at my thinnest. There wasn’t much middle ground, I never really had confidence in how I looked. Now, with hindsight, I get that it’s okay to be like that – just as (in theory) you get wiser as you get older – you really need to grow into yourself before you can like what you see.
The thing is, now, we’re an instant society – we want stuff NOW. We’re growing terrible at waiting for anything. We can have anything we want NOW, and usually within a few taps of your phone. I’m just the same – I can’t believe there was a world before Amazon Prime. I’ve forgotten about awkwardly hailing a taxi, I can summon a car with my phone. I can get a Pizza without uttering a word. Everything is quick. Despite having long lives to live – we are desperate for instant gratification.
It’s a lot easier to get cosmetic surgery these days – the cost is coming down. It’s no longer just in reach of Hollywood stars and multi-millionaires, with a few thousand in your pocket can dramatically alter the way you look. Heck, with a few hundred you can have some botox, teeth whitening, and lip fillers. Take the stars of Love Island 2018. Megan had (apparently) £25k’s worth of work done before the appearing in the show. She’s 24! That’s no age at all – the picture above is me at 23. I reckon with £25k spent on me, I could have looked better – but you know, I’m pretty okay with how I turned out. Plus, if you actually look at how Megan used to be, she’s actually really pretty – a little nerdy, but still beautiful. She’s not alone – a lot of the Love Island men, and women have had some kind of work done.
The people on Love Island are all gorgeous, because it’s “aspirational” according to a producer. That’s why there were shots of the Islanders working out, because to get a tummy you can bounce a penny off you NEED to do exercise. However, no matter how much exercise you do, your teeth won’t radiate white, your lips won’t plump, your wrinkles won’t fade, and your boobs won’t balloon. It’s feels no longer acceptable to be an imperfect 20-30 something, you don’t have to put up with what you were born with. You can change your appearance dramatically before you’ve even grown into yourself. Plus, these surgeries don’t last forever – you’re on a vicious cycle of having to have everything tweaked again a few years down the line.
I guess you just need to give yourself a try – you might be fat, you might get thin – but you’ll level out somewhere you’re supposed to. You don’t need to be plumped up, smoothed out, boosted, whitened or tampered with. Just let yourself get to where you’re meant to be.
You might not end up on Love Island – do you want to be? Probably not..
