Self-Idealization and Self-Internalization

Self-Idealization and Self-Internalization on Instagram and How This Affects Developing Young Women

By Ron Dimaano

 

Figure 1:

(Calogero et. Al. 2005)

Instagram is a widely used mobile application to share pictures, with a social community built behind it.  With over 400 million users signed up, it has one of the highest rate of user engagement for a social media platform. We have user sharing photos of their food, dogs, vacations, fashion, fitness, and even beauty models.  With at least 400 million users, I am sure a good chunk are women in the developing stage of adolescence to emerging adulthood. The developing women are trying to explore their identity, focus on themselves, and are instable in respect to different possibilities of love, work, and their lives in general (Santrock, 2016). These same young women will see all this pressure from Instagram from the self-idealization and self-internalization of these Instagram models. These models showcasing their entrepreneurial super-ego through their pictures e.g. selfies, captions, and their personality presented on their profile (Wagner et. Al., 2016). And even if these young women on instagram follow these different accounts, they will be exposed to vast amounts of similar content due to the explore page- going back to the idea of the “filter bubble” from the TED-Talk video in class. This leads back to the research question if these Instagram models self-idealization and self-internalization are doing more harm than good on the minds of their women followers.

 

Selfies display a powerful way to identify the relationship between your self-created image and the perception of one self- especially on Instagram where your followers are able to view, like, and comment on your selfies. Selfies are a fascinating aspect presented in Instagram, it displays a more direct relationship between the user’s body image and the constant activity/engagement on Instagram. Women who are using Instagram daily are found to have a tendency to compare the appearance to specific target groups on Instagram e.g. sports models (Fadouly et al., 2017). This indicates these active daily users on Instagram, who are young developing women, are constantly comparing themselves to air-brushed, heavily addicted, and excessively planned pictures-possibly wondering, why aren’t they getting this many likes on their own selfies? A recent study showed a direct relationship between body dissatisfaction and number of selfies taken (Wagner et. Al., 2016).  This causes young women to develop a dissatisfaction of one-self if they continue to expose themselves to social norms of beauty presented on thousands of these Instagram profiles.

These big Instagram accounts of various Instagram models are marketing their glamour to these young developing women. It can promote their followers to accept these beauty ideals presented by these Instagram models. Is it fair for these young women to believe they can only be attractive if they are thin and toned especially in such a vulnerable developmental period (Santrock, 2016)? Figure 1 suggest that internalization can lead to objectification of one’s self, which can ultimately lead to trying to achieve this standardized look-for example, in the movie Miss Representation from class, there were young girls who strived to be thin just because of these beauty models they would see in different media outlets. This goes back to the self-internalization and idealization presented by these Instagram models. (Fardouly et. Al., 2017). This acceptance of an advertised standardized concept of beauty will definitely lead to body image concerns. (Fardouly et. Al., 2017). It is arguable how one interprets these instagram accounts and their advertisements-similar concepts explained in our McCloud understanding comics reading.  A colleague of mine goes into detail about the negative effects Instagram has on body image.

 

Works cited:

 

• Calogero, R.M., Davis, W.N. & Thompson, J.K. Sex Roles (2005) 52: 43. The Role of Self-Objectification in the Experience of Women with Eating Disorders. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-005-1192-9
• Fardouly, Jasmine. Kwillburger, Brydie. Vartanian, Lenny. New Media & Society, Instagram use and young women’s body image concerns and self-objectification: Testing mediational pathways. February-01-2017
• Santrock, John W. Life Span Development. Mcgraw-Hill Education, 2014
• Wagner, Charles. Aguirre, Ester. Sumner, Erin.The relationship between Instagram selfies and body image in young adult women by
  First Monday, Volume 21, Number 9 – 5 September 2016

Annotations:

• Instagram use and young women’s body image concerns and self-objectification: Testing mediational pathways. Jasmine Fardouly, Brydie Kwillburger, Lenny R Vartanian. New Media & Society,February-01-2017

 

The research question behind this article was to study whether internalization of the societal beauty ideal, appearance comparison tendency in general, or appearance comparisons to specific target groups on Instagram mediated any relationships between Instagram use and the appearance-related variables. If I were to share this article with someone, it would show that their research results did suggest that the use of Instagram has negatively influenced women e.g. greater self-objectification. The authors have their doctorate degrees in Psychology. Their target audience seem to be other scholars/peers who are looking into the same topic. The article was not written in a comprehensive manner that the general public would able to completely understand. The article itself was not influential or compelling but it did have solid information and data presented to back up their claims. The article was also published early-2017.  I recommend this article to my peers because it touches base with some of our different focuses. Whether it’s self-objectification, self-idealization, comparisons tendencies women have from using Instagram- it’s an article we can use to back up our claims. What it helps us understand about the research topic is that there is a negative influence from the use of Instagram when an average female user opens up the application and see’s thousands of photos of air-brushed, heavily-edited photos of models.