It's okay. You don't have to "glow up."

It starts just as every doom scroll starts. A moment of boredom. A need for a distraction. Desperate for disassociation. Your hand goes on autopilot and your thumbs perform their hourly workout as they swipe between endless TikTok videos or Instagram reels. One video has you cackling as you watch someone take a nasty, yet hilarious fall. The next video has you questioning your entire life as you “spend the day” with that influencer who wakes before the sun rises to tend to their homestead while somehow still appearing to look flawless and perfectly rested. The next video shows you the workout everyone needs to do to blast their “FUPA” (for the record, I hate that word) and get a 6-pack in six weeks. Your thumbs swipe again and you’re shown an ad for that magic pill that will heal your gut for good. Another swipe leads you to the skin care regimen that guarantees glass skin because, clearly, glass skin is the answer to all your problems.

Ah! A news reporter blooper reel! You’re cackling again. This is what you hoped to get out of your doom scroll. Perhaps that laugh is enough to end your scroll or perhaps your thumb swipes up again, looking for just a few more dopamine hits. Either way, whether you are aware of it or not, it is likely that the videos advertising all of the ways your life is in shambles — unless you assimilate to the lifestyle of that so-called influencer — will have a deeper impact on you than the few videos that made you cackle.

This is the goal of society: to convince you every single day that whatever you are doing in life is not enough. As much as we’d like to think that this is a recent byproduct of social media, the only role social media has played in society’s mission is to put this message at our fingertips and ensure our addiction to receiving this message 24/7. Social media didn’t write the original message of never-enoughness, but it has surely exasperated it exponentially.

Society has written the narrative of our forever inadequacy from the moment human hierarchy was not only established but, capitalized for profit.

A brief explanation of how this all began: European colonization, mass genocide, and enslavement led to the creation of a race-based hierarchy to place elite whiteness at the top of society’s social ladder. The following several hundred years are spent crafting ideals, characteristics, traits, and attributes aligned to both whiteness (superiority) and blackness (inferiority). Through systemic and cultural racism, we have learned to attribute most of what we would deem positive, successful, and even righteous to whiteness and every opposite element to Blackness.

Example? The white elite labeled and treated the Black population as insipid, crafting false scientific evidence and forbidding or limiting education access to justify this classification. In turn, the white population was considered intelligent, educated, and “cultured.” Another prime example? How fatness and hyper-sexuality were used to label the Black population, especially Black women, so that white people would be encouraged to maintain lean figures that became a marker of self-control and moral superiority. Want more? Just turn to housing, socio-economic status, beauty and fashion trends, and more. It’s everywhere.

Whiteness has been deemed the standard in our society. The characteristics and attributes that society has labeled as whiteness throughout its development have become the primary selling points that capitalism uses to ensure white supremacy continues to function. It has become our norm to incessantly chase these standards, believing that our achievement of them makes us worthy, as society demands us. What society doesn’t tell us is that it is purposefully moving that standard ever so slightly so that it is always just out of reach for those who exist even within closest proximity to it. The moment you think you may have grasped that standard, it moves. The moment your income status finally hits the range that society deems you worthy of possessing what humans should already, rightly possess, the cost of living increases. The moment you earn that degree that you were told was needed to guarantee your job security, the job requirements expand. The moment you finally reach that body type that society has convinced you will make you love yourself, a new, usually thinner body type becomes the standard. Each of these standards takes the characteristics of whiteness they were founded upon and slightly tightens the reins so that, once again, you find another reason to chase.

A point of clarification that I always feel the need to make when speaking about this: to have that degree, income status, or body type is not inherently white. This would communicate that degrees, wealth, and other societal standards can never touch someone who is not white, especially the closer they are in proximity to Blackness. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Society wrote the false narrative that these standards belong to elite whiteness and created systems to guarantee that the reality matched the narrative. Over time, those standards became associated with whiteness and, due to systemic barriers, could be proven statistically. Then, those statistics are used to “justify” the racism and belief in the inferiority of the Black population. To maintain this hierarchy, the standard has to continue to move. Why? As more Black people and other racialized groups find ways to dismantle these systems to gain access to those standards, the standards themselves must change to remain out of reach. This impacts everyone, no matter your identity, causing us all to feel as though there is something wrong with us. We believe we aren’t chasing hard enough or running fast enough. We allow society to convince us that we are the problem.

Over time, it has become the norm of our culture to be relentlessly chasing after something. I don't think I've ever met anyone who has said, 'I love where I am and there's nothing about myself that I need to change.' I don’t think I have ever met anyone who is fully satisfied, content, and even proud of their humanity exactly where it is. And that’s how society would have it. The incessant chasing may take different forms across generations, but the chasing itself remains unchanged. Just take a look at diet and wellness culture. What began as racialized hatred toward the Black body and associating fatness with Blackness has become a culture plagued with fatphobia. We have seen fatphobia present itself with a rise of eating disorders and heroine chic throughout the ‘90s. If you rewind just a few decades before that, many women maintained their figure through drug misuse and nicotine addictions that were accepted at the time. And, if you fast forward to today, the body-positive movement of the early 2010s has transitioned into a culture obsessed with gut health, hormone balancing, and cottage cheese. Different presentations, same demon.

With every other thumb swipe on social media, we are bombarded with ways we ought to “glow up.”

“The time is now to start that YouTube channel.”

“Here’s how I lost 20 pounds in one month.”

“How I forage my own apples to make applesauce and why the storebought brand is killing you.”

“The perfect morning routine that totally changed my life.”

“Why you need to have seven income streams.”

“Every item of clothing you need to be wearing so you can stop aging yourself.”

It seems simple. It seems harmless. It seems…aspirational, even. The morning routine is probably a great one! Homemade applesauce is probably better tasting than storebought. We do live in an economy that makes having more income streams not only appealing but necessary. Maybe you should start that YouTube channel if you have a stirring in your heart to do so. That wardrobe is cuter than my current stuck-in-the-2010s attire. None of these things are inherently bad. However, within our society, these are not merely suggestions for better-tasting apple sauce. Each of these suggestions is tied to a standard that defines our worth in accordance with society. That homemade applesauce represents the financial ability to make said applesauce. That homemade applesauce represents an idealized aesthetic of white stay-at-home mothers who are too good to feed their kids storebought food, thus eliciting an inferiority complex in those who do. That wardrobe inspiration also represents a culture of ageism, elitism, and even sexism. That push to start a YouTube channel and monetize every hobby you have is rooted in the standard of persistent productivity and perfectionism because if you are not perfectly productive, society tells you that you have no value. And, of course, that umpteenth exercise video is the reason you continue to look at your body with disgust in the mirror no matter how many body-affirming practices you try to do.

Though it is not as obvious as it once was, the standards and the “glow-up” that we are being coerced to strive for are rooted in the idea that whiteness is superior.

Our beauty standards are still Eurocentric. Our clothing trends are Eurocentric. Food that is idolized as “cleaner” and “healthier” are not typically foods enjoyed by the People of the Global Majority, or, they are whitewashed versions of those foods and are only deemed healthy once white people make them trendy. This is the same with other standards, such as growing your own foods and making dishes from scratch. This recent trend that has become a standard to strive for is only trendy because it has become synonymous with white stay-at-home trad wives and mothers. Yet, growing organic foods and cooking meals from scratch is a global practice. Before it became a trendy standard used by white women to determine moral superiority, the global practice was viewed as inferior and as a lack of technological advancement. Not to mention, it is now mainly accessible to those with the means to do so. Do you see the pattern, here?

No matter what the standard is, it can be traced back to the foundational idea of our society that keeps itself running: whiteness is a gold standard that must be achieved to prove that you are worthy.

It is the underlying message of every way that society has ever yelled at us that we are not enough. That message might change its wording from generation to generation or trend to trend, but the message itself remains consistent.

Here’s the good news: once you learn the root of this messaging, you have the power to ignore it. Once you see just how obsessive this messaging is and just how much it infiltrates every corner of society, you can’t unsee it. Once you realize just how much this messaging is affecting your every thought and behavior, you will become determined to free yourself from its control.

You do not have to follow society’s latest push to glow up. You don’t have to change your body. You don’t have to monetize your hobby. You don’t have to forage your food. You don’t have to do anything to adhere to any standard that society has attached worthiness to. You can do these things if they make you genuinely happy, excited, and feel free. Again, getting 10k steps in and upgrading your skincare routine is not inherently bad. Cooking from scratch could be that thing that makes you giddy and perhaps that video you just watched gave you the motivation to try something you never have before. That’s perfectly fine. That’s beautiful. But you don’t have to do anything to make yourself more worthy. You don’t have to follow that diet. You don’t have to lift those weights. You don’t have to go that extra mile at work. You don’t have to prove your consistent productivity. You don’t have to upgrade your morning routine. Your fridge can be unorganized. Your day doesn’t have to look like that influencer’s “spend-the-day-with-me video.” You don’t have to always be healing.

Your existence is enough.