PRESSURE

The pressure that I live with is insane. And I know that almost every single one of my friends live with this similar pressure.
Can you remember the last time you felt genuinely relaxed?
The last time you weren’t anticipating your plans for the weekend?
The last time you’d finished all of your schoolwork, were on good terms with all your friends, and felt content with your appearance and body?

We are always striving, and never succeeding quite enough. There’s always something more to do, we have to be thinner and smarter and more tanned, we have to have more followers, more clothes, and more meals at Armchair Collective.

The expectations from our parents are usually very high, and this is fair enough. I feel very fortunate to live where I do and go to school where I do, and with the amount of things my parents have given and invested to me, I feel an obligation to give back to them. As a result, however, I’m always quite stressed. Maybe it would be manageable if I only had to get a good night’s sleep, study hard, clean my room, play a sport, have a part-time job and spend Sunday nights with my family. Even that is a lot on its own, but when you add in the pressure from boys and peers to be excelling in social areas too, it becomes virtually impossible to be both happy and in control.

 I once felt pressure to be thin, to be tanned, to have perfect skin, no regrowth, to go out once on the weekend to either a party or a gathering and to upload the correct amount of photos (of course at primetime, with the most innovative caption, perhaps in another language). I am a little over a year away from finishing school. And still, people are so concerned with these things. I highly doubt my friends at Uni or people I meet when I travel will care that one Sunday I had fresh muesli and that I have 500 Instagram followers... I've realised that I should be living my life for myself, not for the purpose of satisfying others' watchful expectations.

I think that unfortunately, social media and the media in general have melded and projected this image of a perfect woman, in terms of physical appearance. And our generation has taken this image, and set it as the norm. For girls, we need to be thin, (often in reality this is underweight), but we need to have big boobs and a “nice ass”. We need to have flawless skin and popping eyes and plump lips, but too much make-up gets you called a cake-face. We need to wear the correct clothes from Glue, Tigerlily, and Zimmermann, but we get criticised for showing too much cleavage. What I’m trying to say is, that there is a very fine line in being able to fulfil everyone’s expectations, and not receive disapproval.

Popularity, defined by a dictionary is: the state or condition of being liked, admired, or supported by many people. I think it is a very difficult word to pinpoint, as it can really be interpreted in many ways. Popular for being kind-hearted, is not what we would consider the definition today. I would probably say that someone is described as popular if she or he has many Instagram followers, over 200/300 likes on their photos, who is generally quite thin, buff or attractive, generally appears in most photos of big parties and who’s name is recognised by many people. It is disgusting to think that people measure popularity on the amount of people that have clicked the “like” button on the Internet, or the centimetres between each of their legs. But it is us that have coined this definition, and us who continue to let it apply to these people who really have done very little to be admired or worshipped in such a way that they are. I listen to the conversations of my peers at lunch and they are discussing the things they saw on the newsfeed the night before, or they ask one another, “omg did you see that photo of her?” We are so judgemental and it is honestly lame how concerned we are with other people’s business.
It has gotten to the point where the purpose of our lives is to do things, wear things and say things, in the hope of impressing others.

We all need a bloody reality check. I will say it: ACAI DOES NOT TASTE GOOD, nor does organic quinoa chia seeds drenched in overnight fatfree soy milk from Mickey’s Café in Paddington. We take photos of our meals instead of enjoying them. We take photos of our outfits and makeup before a party so that people know where we are going tonight. We caption our photos in Spanish with II lines and semi-colans, and an emoji that hasn’t resurfaced for a while. We share our photos – WHY! Why can we not see how vain it is? Oh but we do. Hence why we get our friends to share our photos, or we upload them at a time where enough of our Facebook friends will see it, and godforbid we go to TAG OURSELVES in our own photos. Could I just take a minute to say thank you, honestly I would never have guessed with your name on your profile and a photo of you, that you were the one in the photo. Really, thanks for that clarification.

We are getting to the point where the youth of our generation are skipping the awkward stage. I myself, wore clothes from Target, Supre, Equip and Piping Hot long before I heard about the cool labels within General Pants. My sister's grade, two years below me, insisted on buying seafolly bikinis and glasshouse candles, Tiffany jewellery and Raybans sunglasses whilst at their age I settled for some diva bangles and a speedo tankini.

And the worst part is, that we go out and slave in these underpaid jobs just so we can buy a dress that we can wear once. Yes, that’s right – once. Why? Because there is bloody photographic proof wherever we go. You couldn’t be caught dead in the same dress to a party within two months. Everyone would notice and comment. This extends as far as to wearing the same colour to two formals. Are you serious? It is a shade of cloth for god’s sake. 10 years ago, I wouldn’t have to worry about what girls wore to their Sceggs, Monte, PLC and Wenona formal’s. Now I wouldn’t even buy the same dress as someone, for fear of someone noticing, and either comparing that girl and me or accusing me of copying her.

I hate how I have to share these thoughts with you on social media. It is so ironic that I have to promote a post about social media on social media.

We all need a massive reality check. Let’s upload photos of comfy joggers and a good old ham and cheese sandwich. Let’s share funny youtube videos instead of music by Alt-j or whatever random letters that band has put together as a title. 

It infuriates me that it is so easy to change our nasty habits, yet we only have ourselves to blame. I challenge you to change one thing that you admitted you do whilst reading this. Whether this if finding a cool Instagram about me message, or commenting on people’s photos in the hope to get a comment back, or spending $900 on a few hours at one formal. Don’t put the corner of a Vogue magazine in the corner of the photo of your breakfast, eat it! Go to a café with your friends and order 9 hashbrowns and some bacon instead of an organic guava and wheatgrass juice. Who are we fooling really?

Annie