Women online can really kick you when you’re already down, unintentionally.

It’s hard to see celebrities and social media influencers being popular because they’re pretty. There’s a pressure to look like them, to act like them. It can teach girls that being liked means being perfect, and that’s not true.

I had a lovely chat with Rosie Turton, a content creator aged 20, about women in the public eye and how it can affect young girls.

“Body image isn’t something I’ve ever really struggled with until recently. I’ve always looked at people wishing to look like that; comparing yourself to other people can be quite hard especially at a young age. You want to look like [women online] but that’s not the stage of life you’re at. Even social media trends, like lamination eyebrow trends, natural girl, clean girl trends, type a or type b. It just a narrative, as if you have to be something. You have to fit into one of the categories.”

There’s another problem of women online promoting unnecessary, unachievable beauty standards. Rosie and I spoke about Mounjaro injections, they’re all over the internet at the minute.

According to the NHS, Mounjaro is a medication to support weight loss by making you feel full without eating. It’s prescribed as a part of a full NHS care plan specifically for people who are dangerously overweight or have other health conditions such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart disease or type 2 diabetes.

However, many people online are privately buying Mounjaro injections, mainly women who wouldn’t meet the NHS criteria. Many of these women are arguably already slim and may not really need it. By turning this experience into content, they’re advertising to young girls that they need injections to be slim, at such an age when there’s already so much pressure surrounding their bodies. The goal is to make you feel smaller enough that you need to buy something to fix it.

Rosie said,

“This is a big thing for me. People who are skinnier than me, online saying they can’t eat today because I’ve had my Mounjaro or ‘I’ve had a McDonalds today so I’m not eating for the rest of the week’. That isn’t normal. It presents this false narrative of what people are supposed to look like. So, then I think there’s something wrong with me. They talk about it so normally, as if it is, and makes me think is this what I should be doing?”

Mounjaro is just an example, but it can be upsetting to see women look the way you want to look. It can make it easy to pick about your body, zoom in on your insecurities and doubt your reflection.

It’s not a fair fight comparing your life to an Instagram life. The media teaches you to forget that these are real people who deal with the same stuff as everyone else. Their life may look like brand deals and events, but there’s always a lot more behind the curtain.

Your worth is not a number of likes or followers. You need to focus on your reality, be grateful for what you have and show yourself some compassion. Self-love goes a long way.