Peer Pressure Thoughts
Are core values and perception in society changing? An example:
It’s simple, we just don’t see things the same sometimes. In this day and age of emails and texting for example, one can read an email in totally the wrong context and determine in our own mind that the sender is being blunt, aggressive or rude. However, in the senders’ mind, they have got the message across before shooting out to another meeting. The same is true of social media and we need to be careful that what we often read may not be intended that way.
I had a discussion with a friend who was upset about making and receiving comments on Facebook and following our discussion I asked that she write it down for me, so this is her example:
“I was scrolling through FB the other night when a page for cosmetic procedures appeared on my feed. The pictures were of a young client who had recently had lip fillers, which I thought looked really good, but I also thought that whilst the picture looked lovely, the client’s lips looked perfectly natural before the procedure, so I made a comment and I thought nothing further of it.
A couple of days later I started receiving notifications on FB, mainly from relatively younger people responding to my comment. In some cases, I was being called unkind, rude, inappropriate and a bully. I replied to several of the comments, apologising for any upset caused and explained that my comment was in fact to point out that the client’s lips were lovely to begin with”
Is it down to peer pressure…
The question is: Does it come down to peer pressure from what is “perceived as beauty” and therefore our insecurities, or is it something else in society today? What is clear is that the advertising of cosmetic procedures on a platform such as FB and others is becoming more and more prominent with influencing young people and feeding their insecurities, which in turn is why my friend wanted to comment about the natural beauty of the client.
“This was apparently the nail in my coffin, I was politely informed that my comments had been removed, that the page was not for people to leave negative feedback on, and I was subsequently and promptly blocked from the page.
I have been left feeling slightly bewildered by the experience, that praising a person’s natural beauty on a promotional cosmetic procedure is in fact a complete faux pas, I should have in fact been praising the cosmetic procedure itself for enhancing said person’s look!
Ironically, I personally have no issue with cosmetic procedures or enhancements, (I’ve only recently had my eyebrows micro-bladed) but the point is to do with how mindset is evolving and how easily it is (as my experience above confirms) to become out of touch with our younger generation and their way of thinking. I think of my young daughter and how in years to come I’ll need to be able to relate to her world to have any chance of understanding her”.
Now back to me, Personally I am a 40 something year old bloke who likes natural beauty, which I bet you could guess, but having said that I know plenty of people, mainly ladies, who crave cosmetic surgery of one kind of another which is fine, whatever floats your boat. What worries me is what we are missing here and that brings me to an old phrase; Beauty (on the outside) is only skin deep and I worry that society, through advertising, peer pressure and (it has to be said) social media is losing core values such as kindness, honesty, trust and compassion.
To finish this post, I will leave you with an apt message from my friend:
“If I hadn’t been blocked from the page I think that I’d now like to reach out and thank the commenters; I’d like to say that you’ve opened my eyes to a change that I thought I could already see, when in fact my eyes were closed shut”.
All the best… Darren
