Op/Ed: You’ll Never Be “That Girl” Because She Doesn’t Exist
By ShayLa Blake
Picture From Linkedin
One of the things I find most disappointing about our culture is how much stock we put into “image” and how we are perceived by those around us. For so long I have seen people pretend to be a different person just to be liked by people. I'm guilty of it just like everyone else, but I have been fortunate enough to find people who I never have to pretend with. It took a while to find that security in the people I'm around and before that I fell victim to the world's expectations of me. I tried so hard to be “that girl” before it was even a thing.
Around summertime I usually see a common trend of people trying to “better themselves” which usually looks more like degrading the person they currently are in favor of someone they wish they were. This year the beast that is self image was finally given a name, “that girl.” “That girl” is the very definition of perfection; she does and says all the right things, she wears the right clothes and she does everything she could ever want. The idea reminds me of the “popular girls” that we watched on TV growing up that inevitably made us feel terrible about ourselves and left people feeling jealous of fake people. And that is exactly the problem with the “that girl” trend: she is fake and unattainable.
Picture from wikipedia
The idea of self improvement is beautiful and should always be a trend. The most important thing about self improvement is the idea of “self,” and making positive changes for you and only you. Everything that I’ve seen about “becoming that girl” has everything to do with conformity and being the expectation and nothing to do with self love and empowerment. This is not to say that some people don’t actually just want to be better and this is how they think they'll achieve that goal, which is good. If your self improvement is based on being a person that was created and perpetuated by the internet, you're never going to reach your goal. There will always be a new “that girl” that everyone will want to be and you’ll never be able to catch up with the idea of perfection we’ve all created.
Self improvement is something I think everyone should strive for. However, it should be on the terms you set for yourself and not on the superficiality of the internet. “That girl” should not have one definition and should be exclusively defined by the standards we hold for ourselves. It is far more important to be the best version of yourself than the version of a person who doesn’t even exist.