Do You Have “Legging Legs”?: Capitalizing Off of Women’s Manufactured Insecurities.
- Romaisa Rehab Khan
- Oct 5, 2024
- 3 min read
Before I downloaded Instagram and TikTok, I had no idea how many unrealistic beauty standards existed. I used to think people were just “pretty” or “not pretty”. Suddenly, social media showed me that there were all these things that could be “wrong” with a person’s body that I never even thought about before. Phrases like “legging legs”, “glass skin”, “symmetrical or Asymmetrical face”, “tank top arms”, “Positive or Negative Canthal tilt”, “deer pretty or bunny pretty”, “large pores” and “hip dips” are common lingo on social media these days. Tiktok has created a very narrow conception of beauty and is actively creating detrimental beauty standards targeting specifically women with its predominantly female demographic.
Everyday a new body part is extensively discussed as an insecurity. The new common topic is “legging legs” which meant that leggings were only flattering if you had a thigh gap. Or the idea of “hip dips” – a hip shape that has been declared an insecurity or undesirable. Another big target of the tiktok community is skin, now having “glass skin” is the new norm. Such unattainable and unrealistic myths are common discourse on the app. Not only is the app manufacturing insecurities and beauty standards but now also capitalizing off of the insecurities. After falling victim to this manufacturing of insecurities and falling into marketing traps I noticed a pattern. Right after a new insecurity is introduced on the app, it is soon followed by an “ultimate life hack” or a “must have product” to “fix” what’s “wrong” with your body.
After the obsessive discussion over hip dips and legging legs, came the influx of workout plans and routines that will help you get rid of your hip dips and help you achieve legging legs. These plans and routines are often behind a paywall or on youtube where the creator can make money. During quarantine the subject of hip dips became so popular that a creator named Chloe ting released a workout video for hip dips and for an hourglass body that is now at 46 million views. Similarly, life hacks, products for fixing your “large pores” or “dull skin” have been endless. A new trendy beauty standard is having “Glass skin” that is from a korean origin thus only korean skin products can help you achieve this look. Articles titled “This 11-Step Routine Gave Me the ‘Glass Skin’ of My Dreams” by popular magazines like Glamour use these trendy terms to gain more traction. Filters on tiktok that inverted the camera, was a new way to look at your face to know whether your face is symmetrical or not. This was followed by the introduction of the “gua sha” – scraping the skin with a smooth-edged tool to stimulate blood flow and reduce inflammation. Soon everyone I knew had one and was obsessively using it to make their face more symmetrical.
Companies have realized that people will bend over backwards to fit these narrow conceptions of “beauty” thus actively capitalize on these manufactured insecurities, creating this idea that these holes in us can be filled with a swipe of a card. Corporations suddenly have the magical cure to what’s “wrong” with your body. These companies are making huge profits by convincing people that they aren’t good enough as they are, and that they need to change, whether it’s to be happier, prettier, or just to fit in. It’s all about making us feel like we constantly need to ‘fix’ these socially constructed problems with our appearance. If it took me a while to identify this common pattern of capitalizing off insecurities, there are many young and impressionable children on the app who might never realize this system of socially constructing insecurities and then marketing and profiting off of you. These trends are also ever changing, tomorrow there will be a new standard to follow and a new product that will be the “ultimate hack” to achieving this standard.
So next time you consider buying the newest trendy product to help with your hyperpigmentation or buy a workout plan to fix your hip dips, consider that the real fix isn’t in changing our bodies to fit socially constructed beauty standard but in rejecting the manufactured insecurities that profit off of them in the first place!