11. Glow up & Self Care Culture: Is it toxic and Self-Centered?

A little Atypical

Education:Self-Improvement

2023-12-21

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Is Glow up & Self-Care Culture toxic and Self-Centered? This debate is a tale as old as the internet, but I would like to offer a fresh perspective: Is Glow up & Self-Care Culture more toxic than a person who is miserable but won't do anything to fix it? Does Glow Up & Self-Care Culture really push perfection and products or are the creator who are still in progress of their goals not as pushed by the algorithm? Would glow-up culture look different if people didn't favor results but wanted to see the progress of people bettering themselves? What if people didn't associate glowing up with changing themselves but trying to learn to live a life that makes them feel fulfilled and aligned with themselves? Stay tuned and please read the highlights to get a more direct version of what I am explaining.

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Highlights

Glow-up culture is what you make of it: If you believe that glowing up stems from aligning yourself with conventional beauty standards and meeting societal expectations, you will view it as toxic. A glow-up doesn't have to mean doing more. It doesn't have to mean it doesn't change your physical appearance if you are happy and confident with yourself physically. You get to decide what a glow up for you based on your life circumstances.
The algorithm pushes glow-up content that comes from people who seem more aligned with societal expectations and tend to favor more people who are "put together" and reach their results over people who show their progress and are still in the middle of things. If more people value the imperfection aspect of people exploring what it means for them to glow up, we would have a more balanced perception of glow-up culture.
While content creators do have a digital responsibility for the content they put out (aka being authentic and honest), it is also parents' and guardians' responsibility to have a deep conversation with their children about social media in general. In the past, kids were just comparing themselves to people in their age range in their common community (at school). Now they compare themselves with adults and kids their age who grew up with circumstances other than them (having a wealthy background or supportive parents or parents that don't supervise them). The Comparison conversation was always supposed to be a part of the lessons parents educate their children about but with the addition of social media being a common aspect of our lives, it needs to be addressed as well.
Having a self-care practice allows people to be less selfish, self-centered, and in their head about their lives. When you are not happy with yourself, you try to give to/help other people with the expectation that because you are helping them, they need to help you in the same way with the problems you don't even want to fix yourself. You seek validation in them because you don't know how to validate yourself. You become dependent on them and your actions aren't actually authentic (which means the connection you have is not genuine). When you glow up and participate in self-care, you are able to be mutual support to your loved ones instead of dependent on their validation, opinions, and approval.
Glowing up and self-care allow people to not act with hate, jealousy, or insecurity. If you know you are doing what you need to simply not be miserable and you have the awareness that even if something is great for someone else, it doesn't mean you will have the same experience from glowing up the way they did. Glow-up transformations and self-care are meant to be personalized to you, stop putting other people's advice on a pedestal when internally you know what you need. Other people's content are inspiration but not the standard, you get to create your own standards.

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How to Make a Vision Board for the New Year: https://youtu.be/nnyaFAuh4TY?si=RasTXfZpj7tYYJAB
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