Identity/Instagram
BY ELIZABETH JOHNSON
You guys are curating yourselves. That’s crazy. Those are words I never thought I would put together. My Women’s Studies professor Uma Narayan stood before our class one Monday morning and completely grilled us. I’m not sure how the discussion in my Global Feminism course went from Thai women working in sweatshop factories to Instagram and self-made fame, but we found ourselves both defending our generation to her and simultaneously agreeing with her frustration, accepting that in our current digital culture we allow ourselves to continuously invent and reinvent our online identity .
Once, I was a 7th grade girl with the Instagram name @blairwaldorf13, an homage to my adolescent mean girl idol. I posted pictures of my daily headband, my dog, selfies of friends and I trying on clothes at the mall, and endless documentations of every single Starbucks order. Of course all of my posts were overly filtered using Instagram’s presets (Sutro and X – Pro II were my personal favorites). I was by no means a photographer/blogger/influencer/or any of the things endless amounts of people make money for on social media nowadays I was just 13, seeking validation, wanting to feel more important than I actually was.
To have grown through formative years of self-esteem with Instagram, through the app’s own transformations, has , left us in a perpetual state of uncertainty when it comes to our digital identities. . Who do you present yourself as? Are you still the person you originally were when you first got social media? Per existential thought, one is always changing everyday. You can’t ever be one universally recognized “self”. I would hope I’m not the same person I was in middle school, but there is a consequential difference between the real self and the Instagram self. Both change. The former is most likely due to life experiences, education, trauma, and the influence of other people. The latter though, entails a transformation that is much more concerned with aesthetics. .
Aesthetics go beyond the actual content within the individual photographs being posted to Instagram. While there is the side of Photoshop, Facetune, false clear complexions, and body altercations via edit, where identity curation really manifests is in the Instagram feed. It’s in the color composition of one’s overall account, the photographic content one selects and the captions (or lack there of) strategically crafted to aid in ones visual identity. You become a curator for your own personal gallery, writing curator’s notes (captions) meant to be just engaging enough for people to care.
This obsession with aesthetics has driven people towards an intense need for individuality. It feels natural to strive for originality but what happens when everyone’s looks are so heavily influenced by each other that even in seeking a unique curated self-presentation, you end up with just a mass of subtly varied content creators. Put enough effort in and almost anyone can make themselves seem more relevant than they actually are.
The inherent ambiguity tied to digital identity means that practically anyone can create an online presence and aesthetic even if anonymous, and even, as is the case for @lilmiquela, if the digitally represented user isn’t even embodied. The Instagram account @lilmiquela showcases the life of a computer-generated model, a 19-year-old robot. Despite this, her fashion is up to par with the best models of the modern day, she supports social issues like Black Lives Matter, and often posts pictures with celebrities and other Instagram models. There’s a question of whether or not Miquela’s existence is commenting on something, how easy it is not to completely fabricate a successful life via social media, or if she’s just a fun and fascinating graphic design project. She’s not real yet she represents so much of modern reality – the Instagram lens we live and create our lives through.
The reality of identity is in question when one has the ability to self-curate like this. Can we be genuine if we spend so much effort curating our photos to strategically represent ourselves to seem a certain way? Does this make people find us more interesting in real life? Drake says in his song Nice for What that [hoes] don’t really be the same offline. And while he may also not be the same offline, his lyrics bring to mind the complex dualities that come from having to constantly keep up with our online and offline personas. Instagram can both hurt and help one’s own image of themselves. On the one hand, people are able to explore their identity in freer, more accessible ways but on the other hand, this selective representation of identity is a virtual one that might not always translate into the reality outside of our screens.