Similarly to Essena O'Neill, blogger Alexandra Harvey
captioned against her own ‘model-like’ selfie on Instagram, claiming it to be a
fake representation of her due to lighting, makeup and camera angles. Her
‘honest caption’ relates much to Kimberly Hall’s idea of the cue card
confession trope, where users would post selfies while holding written
statements that explained a deeper and significant meaning about them (229).
Through her online caption Harvey exposes her own selfie in a negative light in
order to emphasize the reality of having the need to conform in order to belong
and fit into idealized social standards. She ends her caption with the hashtag
#SocialMediaIsNotRealLife, indicating how selfies such as the one she posted on
social media does not truly reflect reality as it is an altered representation
of oneself. With the post being one of top liked posts, having a far larger hundred
number of likes compared to similar other selfies, it seems clear that her honest
caption fared well with her audience as many agreed with her message (as seen
with pricey0101’s comment in the screenshot above). Bloggers such as Harvey and
O’Neill continue to pave the way to a better understanding of social media and
how it manipulates social standards of beauty.
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