Most photos you see on social media sites like Instagram probably look perfect. The perfect pose. The perfect expression. The pictures look flawless and so do the people in them.
While we all know that it’s incredibly easy to edit photos before posting them on social media, what many people seem to forget is that we shouldn’t compare ourselves to these heavily edited photos. It can negatively effect how we feel about ourselves if we think we have to measure up to an impossible picture.
Danae Mercer is 33-years-old, and she’s very active on Instagram. She also has 2.4 million followers, more than many Instagramers who post “perfect” pictures. The difference is that Mercer keeps it real. She told Bored Panda, “We’ve been fed perfection for so long. It’s only going to get worse, with all the built-in video editing tools that Instagram and TikTok have, where it’s easy to smooth your skin or shrink your nose in a single click. So I think we need to shout about normal bodies and body image constantly. It helps us remember that social media isn’t real and that there’s a whole lot more to feeling good about ourselves than a 10-second insta snap.”
Scroll down to see multiple examples of Mercer’s Instagram posts and how she is exposing reality verses the fake perfection of heavily edited photos.