Hot Topic: Your Facebook Profile

The above picture is me, posing in front of the floor-to-ceiling window of my room after class one afternoon because I wanted to have a selfie with the beautiful Melbourne before the year ends. This picture was meant to be posted on Facebook as a profile picture, but I was apprehensive about it. So I asked two of my girl friends, and four of my male friends about whether or not I should post it online. The girls both responded with a quick and adamant, "No!" followed by remarks about my sluttiness and promiscuity oozing from that photograph. The boys, on the other hand, all went, "What's wrong with that picture? Just post it." 

Let's get to it:

Whatever we post on social media, we do so not out of our own volition, but by the judgement of those who will see it. We are dictated by a stream of strangers, friends, and acquaintances who talk behind their screens about our latest posts. We are, in a way, in competition with each other. Everything we post has some sort of an agenda to it, may it be intentional or subconscious. That picture of you in a music festival tells the world that you like EDM. A video of you on the beach in a bikini shows off that body you've been working on for months. Whatever you post, whatever you write, it is not a statement of who you are but who you want the world to perceive you as. 

Which sucks balls, really, because it's my profile and it's supposed to show who I am. It has my name on it, my picture on it, and has my goddamn phone number on it, so why would I worry about the opinion of others when it is literally a profile about who I am?

Because I don't want people to think negatively about me. Just like how a lion wouldn't want a deer to think he was afraid, I don't want people to know things about me that I didn't tell them directly. I am flawed in more ways than one, but my Facebook profile can paint me as a pretty picture. I am a rotten apple with a a glossy crimson façade, and I'm afraid of people taking a bite.

Before I post a new profile picture, I would consult my best friends about it beforehand. Is this a good picture? Do I look okay? What should I Photoshop? I have become a slave to the opinion of judgmental people who I know will talk about me based on my posts. That's the thing, I'm so scared of being perceived as being who I really am, instead of who I want to be. I don't want to be seen as a harlot, but maybe I am and I just don't want to see myself as one. I don't want to be seen as ugly, but perhaps I am and I've turned a blind eye to my own reflection.

Girls are vicious. We pick apart the flaws of others and use it as a collage to fill in the personality of said person. Someone will not be smart, funny, talented, and gorgeous, but they will be a smart-ass, promiscuous, and a cake-face. The people we are only friends with on Facebook have no redeeming qualities until proven otherwise. They are just faces on a screen, ready to be attacked. Her nose is too big. Her hair is too flat. She's wearing too much make-up. She has no boobs.

Then it gets worse. We start to make up her personality based on what she posts and her appearance. We start to play God. She's so spoiled. What a bimbo. She can't even draw that well. Her boyfriend is too hot for her. She seems boring. 

The thing is, I do this too. I do this just as much as the next girl. Maybe that's why I'm afraid of posting things online, because I know firsthand how cruel we can be. But we can also sprinkle our compliments on an acquaintance. We can talk about how pretty she is, or how funny, or how smart. We have meticulously tailored the personalities of acquaintances without ever saying more than a few words to them in a lifetime.

My guy friends told me to upload the picture anyway because they all genuinely thought it was a normal photograph. They even asked me, "Why do you think this is slutty?" I didn't. Personally, I find that picture quite normal compared to the plethora of bikini photos on Facebook. I am fully dressed, but I have my cleavage out (big surprise, a woman has boobs! We must alert the Church elders), which might cause quite a stir. My male friends urged me to forget what the other girls would think, but how could I when my Facebook friends are made up of my pious high school classmates? When their judgement stems from their self-righteousness?

One day I'll post whatever I want. Maybe when I have grown up enough to block out the whispers of acquaintances who don't know me. When I'm secure enough with myself as a flawed human being. Maybe then will I break out of these pretty pixelatd walls I've built around myself. Until then, I will cower behind edited pictures and thought-out words, praying that strangers halfway across the world will find me better than I really am.