When 17-year-old Aniya woke up for her first day of faculty this yr, she didn’t stuff a pen in her pocket and grab a slice of toast before bolting out the door like most teenagers. No – she woke up on the daybreak, hours and hours before the college bell rang, and headed out to a 6am appointment with a make-up artist. 

“In Birmingham [Alabama], it’s like a fashion show on the primary day of faculty. Everyone puts on their best outfits – it’s fun,” she tells Dazed. “That’s why I made a decision to get my make-up done. I desired to stand out slightly.” Aniya has actually succeeded in standing out from the gang. In August, Valencia, the make-up artist who did Aniya’s make-up, posted a video of her and one other one among her clients on TikTok. It went viral, racking up tons of of hundreds of views, and sparked an impassioned debate about whether it’s healthy or right for top school students to be hiring skilled MUAs for the primary day of faculty.

Some have argued that we shouldn’t ‘police’ young women’s selections, and it’s actually true that publicly passing judgement on young women doesn’t seem probably the most kind or productive thing to do. If getting skilled make-up done for college helps them feel less anxious and more confident, why not? “I don’t feel like there’s anything incorrect with it,” Valencia tells Dazed. “Some persons are just extra – like me!” Plus, that is hardly a widespread trend – Valencia says Aniya and her other client within the TikTok video “were the one two” she’s had who booked “back to highschool” appointments.

“Truthfully, I feel like so long as you’re not a parent of those students, or so long as these students aren’t violating any codes of conducts at their schools, then you definitely shouldn’t be sharing any negative opinion on this,” Valencia says. “We should always be promoting young Black women expressing themselves. This can be a recent era. Simply because back in our day we weren’t in a position to do stuff like this, it’s not fair to attempt to limit young girls now.”

While it might be absurd to accuse Aniya – a teenage girl – of ‘perpetuating unimaginable standards’ by wearing a full beat for sooner or later, the thought of young women paying for knowledgeable makeover for his or her first day of faculty is undeniably symptomatic of a wider problem. Since time immemorial, women have indisputably been subject to arbitrary beauty standards and felt pressure to look ‘perfect’ in any respect times and it has only been made worse by the rise of social media. 

In response to internal research leaked to the Wall Street Journal, Instagram has made body image issues worse for one in three girls. In one study of teenagers within the UK and the US, greater than 40 per cent of Instagram users who said they began feeling “unattractive” after using the app. One other study, published by the British Mental Health Foundation found that 40 per cent of teenagers said images on social media had caused them to fret about body image.

I asked Aniya whether she felt any pressure to look perfect for college. “I wouldn’t say I feel pressured to look perfect, and definitely not due to social media,” she says, pausing to give it some thought. “I’d say to the individuals who think it’s incorrect: you simply live once!”

It’s cheering to listen to a young woman say that she’s genuinely unfazed by social media – but sadly, that is a problem which affects hundreds of other girls, if not Aniya. “As a teacher I can truly attest that they’re growing up way too fast due to social media influence,” one Twitter user wrote. “My students discuss wanting to get BBLs, lace fronts, lip injections… in middle school.” It is causing a self-esteem crisis. Numbers of cosmetic surgery procedures and non-invasive treatments like filler are skyrocketing and the age of the ladies having them is falling. The Department of Health estimated that as many as 41,000 Botox procedures were carried out on under 18s in 2020 (the UK has since banned the procedures for minors). Meanwhile, eating disorder rates are rising, and half of each men and ladies experience body dysmorphia.

These are cold hard facts, and so they can’t be swept under the rug with platitudes about ‘doing whatever makes you’re feeling good’. It’s like sticking a plaster over a gaping, festering wound – a short-term fix, perhaps, but actually not a long-term one.

Plus, paying for skilled make-up for college is an expense that few can afford or justify, especially when the economy is happening the pan. It’s unquestionably becoming increasingly normalised to fork over a sizeable chunk of your income for beauty-related purchases: from ‘make-up collection’ videos featuring stacks of high-end eyeshadow palettes to the Kardashians inviting us into their ‘glam rooms’, lots of us have subconsciously absorbed the message that our appearances are something that will be ‘fixed’ if we just throw money at the correct people. This isn’t to say Aniya shouldn’t spend her hard-earned money on whatever she wants, however it is price questioning whether young girls are feeling like they need to spend their money on beauty services.

On top of watching others on social media, today’s young women also must contend with people watching them. Again, this isn’t recent – John Berger famously wrote that “men have a look at women, women watch themselves being checked out” back in 1972 – but is something which has turn out to be exacerbated by the omnipresence of social media. How lots of us have felt our self-esteem plummet after glimpsing an unflattering, candid photo of ourselves? Increasingly, we’re priming ourselves to be photo-ready, in any respect times – even, it seems, in a faculty classroom. As Valencia says, “that is the era of content, and so they wish to look good of their content.”

Perhaps, because the Gen Z proverb goes, it’s not that deep. Or, as Aniya puts it: “YOLO”. There are, ultimately, greater fish to fry than two girls getting glammed up for the primary day of faculty, and it doesn’t seem as if it is a widespread trend. But one among these greater fish is the appearance-obsessed context during which young girls are coming of age – the era of social media, of limitless comparison, “of content”, as Valencia says. While Aniya says she doesn’t feel pressured to vary her appearance – and that is improbable – countless other young women do feel the necessity to look perfect in any respect times. For his or her sakes, a minimum of, those upholding unrealistic beauty standards – celebrities, influencers, mainstream media – should do every part of their power to take this pressure off young women – before it becomes the norm to sacrifice your lunch money to book in an appointment with an MUA.