I have no issues with the concept of role models. It is perfectly okay to have people to admire and to look up to.

However, I have found myself adopting an unhealthy mindset about a certain person I’ve met.

These thoughts are obsessive. I put her on a pedestal and sometimes live vicariously through her social media accounts, believing her to be perfect, like the way she looks in her profile picture.

I see her in person and grow shy and avoidant, as though I’m in the presence of a mega-celebrity.

I need to stop this madness! She is not her social media.

In fact, her social media is her at her best, which no one can be, 100% of the time.

It is carefully curated, to create the best possible image. And why?

Because many people first hone in on looks. Social media is a game of initial impressions, in an age when people can barely keep their focus for more than a few seconds before scrolling on.

It’s unhealthy to want to be a person because you don’t think you yourself are good enough. It can often be that you want to look like them, act like them, have their lives…but you can’t. You shouldn’t want to, anyways.

How does one get over this hazardous admiration?

By remembering how to be unapologetically yourself and no one else.

By being brutally honest about social media and apps like Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter and especially Instagram.

By absorbing the content you see on your Facebook feed with a grain of salt.

By understanding the values and limitations of makeup. 

For me, this means comprehending what it means to be an Asian American in a makeup-dominated society. It means taking a break or weening yourself off it for a while until you are confident in your own imperfect skin.

It means reflecting on why you wear makeup in the first place.

By realizing that one doesn’t need to be constantly surrounded by others to be self-content. That being alone doesn’t necessarily mean being lonely.

By remembering that photos are two-dimensional and don’t convey the third dimension, personality. 

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