As you scroll through your feed on Instagram, you are more than likely seeing photos, uploaded by girls and women, of themselves or with friends that are captioned with the hashtag “20 beautiful women” and possibly a few heart emojis or a short caption as well.
In each photograph, 20 girls are chosen to be tagged, and are considered to be beautiful by whoever posted the photo. Then, if you are tagged, you are expected to also post a picture of yourself and tag 20 others. As you can see, this chain will continue to go on until the hashtag has lost its popularity, just like most trends only last a certain time in the media.
But, when you think about it, what happens to the girls who aren’t nominated, the girls outside of the 20? Are they not beautiful as well?
This is when a situation like this hashtag becomes an issue. Anything on social media can be misinterpreted or taken the wrong way, including this trendy hashtag. As citizens in a rapidly growing society that is hyper-focused on technology, we often believe everything we see. For all those women that are seeing these photos but are not being tagged in them, they are more likely than not feeling as if they aren’t beautiful.
When these types of trends come and go within a week or two, we become obsessed with them, wanting nothing more than to be included, and until we are, we feel as if we aren’t as good as the other people in these photos; this completely defeats the purpose of the original intention. Whomever started it obviously had the best intentions, and it is undoubtedly a very thoughtful, kind message to put online, but because of the high standards that beauty is becoming increasingly associated with, not everyone feels as if they’re beautiful.
What children, men, and women have to realize is that beauty is in everyone, everywhere, and everything. Beauty is not simply one specific thing, but rather, it is all the small things such as certain talents, the caring nature of people, hobbies, or the way someone smiles or laughs, which makes every single person completely unique and amazing.
If you don’t see yourself tagged in one of these photos claiming that you’re beautiful, don’t even allow yourself to give it a second of your thought. If you are tagged, make everyone, especially those who may not be noticed, know that they are appreciated.
