Stina Sanders

With over 122 thousand followers on the popular photo-sharing app called Instagram, blogger Stina Sanders posted the above image to her large audience. Captioning it as a bid for a social experiment, she challenges the social norms of being a beauty blogger where one is expected to be flawless and perfect. “Girls post pictures consistent with conformist beauty standards to avoid being marginalized” (Mascheroni et al.). Sanders decided to push away these beauty standards by posting a selfie where she applied facial hair removal cream on her upper lip, providing a glimpse into her lifestyle ‘behind-the-scenes’. Upon posting the photo she lost around 5000 followers but an increase in audience interaction (Sanders). She challenged the idea of conformity as she chose to post a selfie that was not ‘model-like’ and posted one that one would not usually find on the famous app. Seeing how she lost a significantly large amount of followers subsequent to posting that image, it strengthens the concept Mascheroni et al. suggests in their research that we are socialized towards norms where being sexually attractive and active are desirable in females. By going against these social standards through selfies such as this one (with many other ‘unflattering’ selfies also posted online), she receives more engagement from her audience as they see her more authentically, both as a model and a regular everyday woman. She becomes more relatable as she embraces her authentic self, all the while challenging others to do the same.