It’s a beautiful Sunday morning, and I’m scrolling through Instagram. One of my resolutions for this summer was to reduce my screen time, but I still allow myself a few moments in the mornings to see what everyone is up to and communicate with friends via the time-honoured tradition of sending hundreds of reels.
It’s nice to see people on their holidays: an endless feed of bodies on beaches enjoying their well-earned rest. Naturally everyone wants to share what they’re doing, but it’s easy to compare when faced with a flood of stunning stories, and with the additional pressure of perfection that Oxford tends to inspire, the feelings of inadequacy can quickly take over. I’m not projecting the aesthetic of the blasé middle-class-white-girl holiday enough, I’m not bettering my future enough, I’m not ‘Living My Twenties’ enough.
It’s common knowledge that social media only shows the good stuff. We’ve been told this since we were kids, warned by our parents as they, willingly or unwillingly, gave us the keys to the digital world, and yet it never stops deceiving us. Its whole draw is to share memories with your friends, to advertise your highlights with the added satisfaction of having others admire your perfectly put-together life.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with wanting to create your own online space filled with beautiful memories; one look at my own Instagram will show you I am very much a pawn in this aesthetic-chasing game. Whilst I do this for myself as much as for others, I have to admit that the performative element still plays a part. There’s a reason that likes are such dopamine hits.
And so I have my own summer travels to broadcast. Two days after getting back home from Oxford, I hopped over the Channel to France to stay with my grandparents. Theirs being a beautiful home in an idyllic village, Instagram is used to great effect. As I sit eating fresh baguette and apricots for breakfast on the terrace, the photo I take of my laptop and the beautiful garden behind it goes straight onto my story, a picture-bite to encapsulate my day.
Well, at least my morning. This aestheticised self-documentation hides the fact that every afternoon we drive, not to the beach or the local château, but to the hospital. My grandmother is ill, and what Instagram doesn’t know is that instead of leading us on our Sunday walk or helping us win evening boules, she is dying of cancer. Not very hot girl summer.
So, as my perfectly formed summer plans crumble in front of me, why am I still compelled to publicise the stunning views that I am not enjoying without her? Or the picturesque French market where I accompany my grandfather, whose early-onset Alzheimer’s means that he struggles to remember anything in the absence of his wife? Maybe it’s a deliberate form of escapism to cling to these aesthetic snapshots, in the hope that in some alternate universe I am enjoying a summer with a perfectly well grandmother, speaking French and discussing literature as usual. But why, then, do I still take others’ displays at face value when I am so obviously not following my own picture-perfect pretence?
Of course, I am enjoying some of this summer, and I am well aware that preparing for grief in a beautiful cottage in Brittany is a very privileged way to spend a shitty vac. Yet as I scroll through my feed waiting to be let into the hospital room, it’s impossible to stop the surge of envy. But how do I know that these people are not also engaging in false advertising? I’m sure not everyone is deliberately obscuring their realities, and most people probably are genuinely enjoying jetting off around the world, but it’s true that anyone not in my closest group chat could well be looking at my profile feeling the same envy with which I regard theirs.
Is there any escape from this constant cycle? Awareness of its superficiality doesn’t prevent me from wanting to participate in it. Of course there are ways: deleting social media for one, or letting everyone know the reality for another, but cutting myself off from the world of aesthetics isn’t something I want to do, and the latter seems even more performative. The challenge of being aware of my own deceptive front is projecting it outwards and understanding that not everything makes its way online.
Or maybe I’m just saying this to make myself feel better. Chances are my end-of-summer post will be all sunny skies and rainbows, with no mention of the darker threads that have been present the entire time. All that remains is the hope that my own carefully curated perfection reminds me of the rose-tinted lens social media places over reality, and that this awareness eases any envy as the summer vac unfolds in snapshots of other people’s lives.
