You're listening to That's Not Very Ladylike, the show where every week, we start with one rule, ladies don't, and then we do it anyway. Welcome to That's Not Very Ladylike. My name is Tracy Willingham, and you may know me as That Hormone Girl. And today, we are talking about ladies don't post without filtering first. They edit the evidence of being human.
Tracey:So here's the rule. Let's dive in. You're allowed to exist online, but only the corrected version. Smooth the skin, whiten the teeth, suck it in, tilt the chin, find the right good light. And it's not just your face.
Tracey:Your life better look big and full and fun and absolutely thriving every single day too. Delete the photo where you're laughing too hard and your eyes disappear. Delete the day that you were just ordinary. We don't post ourselves. We post the edit of our faces and of our entire lives.
Tracey:And we've gotten so good at it that we now flinch at our own real face in the front facing camera. Like the actual one is the typo. Like, woah, wow, that's rough. So today, we're talking about what it costs to spend your one and only life editing the proof that you were even here. So gather around.
Tracey:It is story time, and I am very excited to tell you my story today. So here's my confession. For a long time, I filtered everything. And I don't mean just my face, my words, my pitch, my makeup, my hair, the whole package. And you know what started to happen.
Tracey:People started following me on social media, but it was the wrong people. People who were not my jam at all. And they tell me how much they loved my look, loved who I was, loved the way I said things, except none of it was me. I was working in nonprofit for a long time, and I hated my wardrobe. It wasn't mine.
Tracey:I had a closet full of pieces that looked like I could walk onto an episode of scandal because deep down, let's be honest, I wanted to be Olivia Pope, as many of you want to be. But maybe I wanted to be a slightly edgier Olivia Pope. Maybe I wanted to wear the cool dress with the Doc Martens. But still, what everybody expected of me was I was to show up polished, pressed, perfect, the version that everybody approved of. And then I started my business, and then I was like, I've got to be me.
Tracey:It's what my coaches were saying, and it's what my soul was saying. So I started being me, the real me, as you're hearing in this show. No filter. Sometimes no makeup. I was showing up perimenopause, bloated face, bloated jeans.
Tracey:Right? Crazy hair. Just as a human woman living a Tuesday, and people started dumping me, unfollowing, and the ones who stuck around had notes. You really should act your age. Maybe you should even dress your age.
Tracey:Have you thought about how your audience wants you to show up? And my personal favorite, from a man, would it hurt to put on a little makeup? And I started to cave. I went back to filtering, angling 40 takes for one reel just to make my audience comfortable and to be liked. And I wanna tell you exactly how that felt after all that work to be approved of.
Tracey:I was miserable. I had successfully made everyone else comfortable, and I had completely disappeared in the process. And that's what we're going to talk about today because there is a cost of this rule. So first, it's the cost to your own mind. Researchers have a name for the loop I was stuck in.
Tracey:Self objectification. We've talked about this on some other podcasts. You stop living inside your body and your life, and you start watching them from the outside and then scoring how they'll look to other people before you've even felt or done them. And y'all, because you know, surgeons even coined a term, Snapchat dysmorphia. Y'all, it's real.
Tracey:I know. This is for people showing up wanting to look like their own filtered selfies. So it's not that they want to be a celebrity. They want their own edited photo to be their life. The filter became the goal, and the real face is the flaw.
Tracey:So now let's talk about the money. And I want to be crystal clear. This is not a shame thing, all right? I love a good lipstick. I get my hair done and I pay very well for this redhead to exist.
Tracey:So wear the lipstick. Get the hair done. This is more about what society quietly requires women to spend just to be considered acceptable. By some estimates, the average American woman spends hundreds of dollars a year on her appearance. By others, several thousand.
Tracey:Over a lifetime, some estimates land near a quarter of $1,000,000. Quarter of $1,000,000. Women spend roughly seven times what men spend on cosmetic procedures. And nearly one in ten people have gone into actual debt to keep up with looking the part. Okay?
Tracey:That's not vanity. This is a tax. It's a tax we got billed for at birth and for the crime of being looked at. And here's the part. Here's the part that you have just got to hear and we've got to say it so plainly.
Tracey:Roughly eighty percent of women say they are unhappy with the way they look. Eighty percent compared to about a third of men. Women, especially women who already struggle with body image, consistently feel worse about themselves after time on social media. Heavy filtering and comparing is linked again and again to body dissatisfaction, anxiety, and depression. And those flawless, sun drenched, perfect life feeds, they're a direct line to impostor syndrome.
Tracey:That gnawing everyone else has it together, and I'm a fraud who doesn't deserve it feeling. It is not a coincidence and it is not a weakness that we have as women. One study found that just cutting social media down to about an hour a day measurably improved how people felt about their own appearance in three weeks. Three weeks. The call really is coming from inside the app.
Tracey:Right? So how deep does this go? Let's look at the history. Now, you might think filtering yourself is a brand new smartphone era problem, right? And it's a lot, but it didn't start there.
Tracey:We have just upgraded the technology. So I want you to go back a few 100 with me. And what I'm about to share with you when I found this listen, I love history and I love going to museums and all that, but sometimes we learn stuff and I'm like, What in the actual hell is happening in this world? Right? So back a few hundred years ago, if a woman talked too much, too loud, argued, gossiped, or even had the nerve to snap back at her husband, she could be branded as a scold or a shrew.
Tracey:And there was a punishment. The punishment was a device called the scold's brittle. And the punishment, there was a device that was created called the scold's brittle or the brink. It was first recorded in Scotland in the fifteen hundreds and used for centuries after. It was an iron cage that locked over a woman's entire head with a metal plate, sometimes spiked, that pressed down on her tongue so she physically could not speak.
Tracey:And then they paraded her through town. The men got the stocks. The woman got their mouths locked shut. And if it wasn't the mask, it was the ducking stool. Strap the loud woman to a chair and dunk her in water in front of everyone.
Tracey:The targets were usually women who were loud, poor, or older. Because silence, silence was considered a feminine virtue. And here's the genius and the horror of doing it in the town Square. You don't just silence the one woman who has the mask who's being dunked. Every other woman watching learns very quickly and silently to herself.
Tracey:So let's be honest about what a filter actually is. It's the pressure to be quiet, pleasant, and pleasing to look at, and it is not new. We used to enforce it with masks and parading and embarrassment. Now it's free and it fits in your pocket and it convinces you that you chose it. So if this could be said out loud, it would sound like this.
Tracey:There's a photo I love of that whole day, but I look tired in it, so I'm not going to post it. I took 40 pictures of myself for one post. They only liked me when I wasn't actually being me. I made everyone comfortable, but somehow I disappeared doing it. My real face is starting to feel like the wrong face.
Tracey:So ladies, ladies, ladies, this should piss you off. This should piss you off because let's look at the trap laid out plain. When I filtered myself, my face, my voice, my whole personality, I got rewarded. Followers, compliments, approval. The second I showed up as an actual human being with a bloated Tuesday face, I got punished, dumped, corrected, and told to fix it.
Tracey:They were never following me. They were following a nonexistent Tracy. And we are all expected to keep that version of ourselves alive every single day, smiling, thriving, on a beach with the perfect coffee, or kindly take our real life and our real emotions and get off the platform. Because you know what? Your truth, it's a downer.
Tracey:And I'll say the part of this out loud. I'm going to say it is a downer. You know why? Because it's bringing us down. We are exhausted from performing a life instead of actually living one.
Tracey:We are deleting the evidence of being a human being and a real human being tired, bored, bloated, grieving, ordinary to keep up a highlight reel that is making every woman who scrolls past it feel like she's failing. So we just keep building on it. My fake life makes you feel bad, so now you have a fake life who makes another woman feel bad. We built a machine that profits when you feel like garbage. And then, it had the audacity to call your exhaustion a confidence problem.
Tracey:So how do you know if this is you? You have a good angle, and you will physically contort to get it. You have taken double digits worth of photos of yourself for a single post. You've edited a picture before sending it to people who see your real face every day. You feel a quiet dip scrolling other people's vacations, kitchens, and bodies, and then you feel silly for feeling it.
Tracey:Or you've softened your real voice or opinions online to keep an audience that you don't even like. So let's look at our reflection. How do we take care of ourselves this week? One small rebellion this week. Post the unedited one or post nothing and just keep it.
Tracey:The laughing photo, the no makeup Tuesday, the real one. And if you say something online this week, say it in your own voice, at your own pitch, the way you'd actually say it to a friend sitting across the table from you, and then watch who leaves and let them. The people who only liked the filtered, flattened, and accommodating version of you were never your people. They were an audience for a character that you got tired of playing. You were an actress.
Tracey:The right ones are out there waiting for the actual you to finally show up. So in closing, here's what I want for you. I want you to post the photo where you are laughing and you have double chins and your eyes are closed and your face is red and you're snorting. The one where your head's thrown back and your eyes have disappeared because you look so joyful, so happy, and so in that moment in your life. And I want you to keep the tired one, the bloated jeans, the full on ten years of perimenopausal photos.
Tracey:That's what I'm in right now. I don't like any of them, but you know what? Perimenopause. So it is what it is. Let's go.
Tracey:Keep the real ones. I want you to say the true thing in your real voice with your real face and let the people who only ever liked the filter go right ahead and get on the hell out and unfollow. Because something happens to a woman when she stops editing herself down to being adjustable, accommodating, likable. When she quits taking the fortieth photo and posts the first one. When she lets her face be a face, and when you let your life be a life unposed, unfinished, gorgeously human, when she stops performing, a woman, and she starts being a woman and a woman who refuses to delete the evidence that she was here.
Tracey:You are deleting that you were here. So let yourself be fully unfiltered, completely seen because that woman is free. And being free out loud in the face and the voice and the body that the world keeps begging you to fix and you say, No, I will not accommodate you, I will be me, I will be the real, I will show up as the woman I am, that's the most unladylike thing of all. Thanks for joining me today for That's Not Very Ladylike. If today's episode lit a fire, pushed your buttons, or called a little BS on the stories we've been sold, share it with another woman who's tired of being told to tone it down, smile more, or play nice.
Tracey:And help a girl out by making sure you subscribe, leave a quick review, and catch me on Instagram at that hormone girl. And until next time, keep getting loud, messy, and raising hell because being ladylike is overrated.