Kelly the Culinarian: #BikiniBridge in a Brave New World

Friday, January 10, 2014

#BikiniBridge in a Brave New World

Oh my, I'm about to get deep. Or at least, as deep as I'll commit to on the Internet.
For all the interwebs that don't know, I work in social media. I'm good at it and I love my job. I spend at least 10 hours a day, five days a week sitting in front of this box. Watching. Waiting. Anticipating what happens next and how to manipulate the masses into conversing online.

It's a brave new world out there.

Social media, like anything else, isn't just puppies and rainbows (or memes and grumpy cat, as it may be). It's so easy to fall into a pattern comparison because people don't tweet about the totally average lunch they had or Facebook the time they fought with their spouse about who should match the socks. There's a reason that envy is one of the deadly sins - it makes us miserable. 
But we're curious by nature. Social media can connect us, provide us with resources and bring people together to better society. It can also be like a car accident - it might make us feel uncomfortable, but we can't look away. The proliferation of #ThinSpo #FitSpo #Thinspiration whatever is a classic example.

No. One.
Stretched via photoshop

Looks. Like.
Tucked and shaded and slimmed via photoshop

This.
I can CLEARLY see the photoshop on the right
So naturally, some entrepreneurial toolboxes decided to take advantage of the environment out there and create the #BikiniBridge "movement." It's not real, people. It is a manufactured campaign engineered by trolls who wanted to see how fast they could push the Internet to believe that this was some sort of inspirational battle cry, along with the appropriate backlash that I would understand if this thing was real.

Because models are simultaneously way too fat  and need to be slimmed or scary skinny and need the life photoshopped back into their eyes. We can't win, and the evidence is all over. So thanks, #BikiniBridge, for highlighting the media war against women and how quickly we've made it the war within.

It's a jungle out there. A beautifully photoshopped and perfectly coiffed mirage of a jungle.

5 comments:

Losing Lindy said...

well said!

Pete B said...

That woman's "transformation" in the video is amazing!

Anne said...

Wow that video is messed up. That barely looks like the same woman. I hate that stuff like Fitspo and Thinspo is out there, giving us more and more unrealistic images to compare our very average, real bodies to.

KellytheCulinarian said...

Exactly, when the photos that are meant to inspire us are of bodies that don't even exist, we will always fall short.

Kim said...

It makes me sad that people even pay so much attention to this stuff, and that some don't realize how touched up it is. I just glance right over all that crap.