We have come a long way and today everybody is a model on social media. Instagram is making anyone and everyone a model.

While models of the past were confined to pixels on television and polished pages in magazines, models today all come in palm-sized screens with a tap and a quick refresh.

It is a numbers game at its core, with Likes and followers defining who is at the top.

It is not enough to simply hold the title of celebrity anymore. Rather, it is all about the ability to get people to double-tap that latest post, and this drastically impacts the way we quantify fame today.

People are modeling after celebrity, and that is what drives it. ‘If I have this, I feel good, I feel worthy, I feel validated.’

And then people put it on their Instagram and it is reinforced through social media as it is passed around. It makes people feel confident. 

It is pretty much evident that modelling itself is no longer, and will never again be, what it used to be. People desperately want to fit in.

One way to do so, especially online, is to model yourself after social media’s most popular figures. Celebrities and Instagram models are seen as what is considered attractive.

That confidence boost, though, will very likely be short-lived, especially if you become increasingly obsessed with presenting an altered version of yourself on social media.

If you are preoccupied with fitting in, it could lead to negative emotion or distress because your identity is tied in with meeting these expectations that are derived from a social norm developed by the media or by a celebrity who you soak up with power.

We do not all look young and we do not all have full lips and smooth skin, and when you see this kind of uniformity, it is a real denial of human physical features. That kind of denial hurts people.

It makes them feel erased, and for women in particular, it makes them spend God knows how much time trying and trying to reach that look that they may be genetically unable to reach.

Social media influencers these days are starting to look like beauty clones. With a few makeup brushes and some lip color, you can be well on your way to looking like everyone else. But why is looking like everyone else something you aim for.