My 'perfect' Instagram life is a fun refuge from reality. I like it that way

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/14/my-perfect-instagram-life-fun-refuge-reality

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My Instagram life is filled with fantastic looking food, beautiful landscapes of places I’m visiting, group shots with good friends and piles of books from smart, relevant authors. As is the case with most people, though, these carefully cropped and filtered photos are half-truths.

Yes, I did hand-make that pasta, but I cursed my way through two different tries before I got the dough right. I absolutely took a lovely vacation, but I sucked my stomach in for that beach shot. I only see my friends on occasion, and I’m just about halfway through one of those books.

Like a lot of social media, much of being on Instagram is about projecting the enviable, best-version of your life that there is - a far cry for the much more messy reality. But I like it that way. My aspirational self is so much more fun than the boring me, and more serene than the chaotic me.

I understand recent attempts to humanize the picture-perfection of Instagram. Hashtags like #TotalHonestyTuesday where people post unflattering pictures, or the hilarious account WomenIRL featuring photos of screaming children and broken dishwashers pull the curtains back on what our lives are really like. It’s “unspiration” - a reminder that we are all, after all, just trying to make it through the day. Considering the standard of perfect women have been held to for so long - be it about the way we look or cook - there is something refreshing about letting it all hang out there. (Though like Slate writer Amanda Hess, I do not believe that Instagram’s presentation of perfection is somehow critically dangerous.)

And there are some sorts of social-media truth-telling I hope we never lose - the movement of women who are fighting back against ideas about what female bodies are supposed to look like - posting pictures of themselves breastfeeding, menstruating and more - are incredible. More of this please.

But sometimes fantasy can be just as political as reality. Some feminist academics have pointed out that selfies, for example, can actually be a way for women to subvert the male gaze, and give women more control over the way they’re presented to the public - a piece of representation that’s usually out of their hands.

My reason for wanting to hold on to my “perfect” Instagram life is not so noble, I’m afraid. I simply don’t want to break up this little corner of the world where all the cocktails are handcrafted instead of spilled on your shirt, and where men on the subway are hot and read books, not lascivious and rub up on you. A world where it looks like I actually know what I’m doing and have my life in some sort of discernible order, rather than the truth - that I am just as lost as anyone else.

So I’ll continue to post food pictures without the story of mistakes behind them, or holiday shots without the arguments on the plane ride over. Because in addition to offering me some refuge - it also sometimes offer perspective. In the midst of a chaotic life sometimes taken for granted, it can be good to see your life through someone else’s eyes (or filter) and be reminded - I am actually quite lucky.