We're In Micro-Insecurity Hell
Graphic: Bella Geraci; Source Image: Getty
Not a single insecurity we’ve ever had about our bodies has been by accident. As far back as the 1950s, advertising brought tiny waists into fashion, a beauty standard that would endure through the “heroin chic” era of the 2000s, in which tabloids dissected celebrities’ bodies with increasingly rigorous standards and new terminology for so-called flaws like “love handles” and “cankles.” In the late 2010s, Tumblr cultivated an obsession with thigh gaps among chronically online millennials. Soon after, “hip dip” insecurity emerged.
Earlier this year, we reached a full-circle moment in January when “legging legs” content began to trend on TikTok, complete with 2014-style thinspiration repackaged with a different name for Gen Z. The app has since banned that content, and searching for it now offers eating disorder resources for users—but that doesn’t change how TikTok’s fast-paced algorithm and cyclical trend culture have made way for a new type of manufactured self-doubt: the micro-insecurity.
Cortisol face. Bad facial harmony. Septum arms. Double lip lines. Myofascial imbalance. Each new micro-insecurity zooms in on a hyper-specific body part and cloaks it with unfamiliar terminology, re-introducing it as the latest iota of your body that must be closely analyzed if not fixed or dispelled. Due to the acceleration of the TikTok algorithm, the monikers for these so-called “flaws” rise in virality and fall faster than you can scroll, regardless if it’s being engaged with out of insecurity or, in the case of “legging legs” and “septum arms,” a wide influx of response content made in protest to that made-up flaw.
There’s a perpetually hellish seasonality to the virality of these alleged bodily flaws, to the point that it feels as if we are all mere spectators to a feverish trend cycle treadmill dedicated to insecurity all in itself. We’re now policing our own bodies at the whims of an algorithm—and therefore criticizing ourselves at a faster pace and maybe even to a greater degree than ever before.
The more the virtual world entangles itself with IRL living, the more legitimacy we grant all the aesthetically aspirational content on our screens. “Having the perfect face and body—or the perfect image of the face and body in the virtual world like the so-called Instagram face—is becoming key to identity, [the] key to being ‘good enough,’” says Heather Widdows, Ph.D, a professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick who specializes in the ethics of beauty culture. “We believe that if we have the right face and body, if we are thin, firm, smooth, and young enough, then we will be rewarded with the good life.” Our image-based culture predicates and affirms this type of content, Widdows says. “In this context, any perceived flaws, however minor, are going to appear huge.”
Striving for the “correct” physical features is nothing new, but the rate at which the idea of what is “correct” changes is. Unlike the mass-manufactured insecurities of generations past, which were created and disseminated by slower-moving traditional media like advertising, magazines, and Hollywood, micro-insecurities are created at a breakneck speed and can come from virtually anyone regardless of their age, gender, career, or even their level of online influence—so long as the algorithm is fed by the insecurity-ridden appetite of the viewers watching.
It may be short-lived internet fodder, fabricating buzz with online virality, but micro-insecurities have long-term mental health impacts regardless of their fleeting and democratic nature. (Once you realize you apparently have hip dips, it’s hard to unsee those divots, even if you come to understand there’s nothing wrong with them.) “When these fads go viral, it gives the illusion that they are widespread issues and that many people—whether it be thousands or millions—are clued into them,” psychologist Emily Green, Psy.D, says. “This creates a heightened sense of urgency for the viewer to get on board or risk being on the outside looking in. If it’s gone viral and everyone’s sharing it, there must be some legitimacy to it, and it can kick-up anxiety.”
There’s no better illustration of that than the recent “vuvuzela arms” incident. Back in July, comedian and content creator Keara Sullivan made up the term “vuvuzela arms,” which is "when your wrist is the smallest part of your arm, and your arm gets wider as it reaches your shoulder,” otherwise known as a totally normal human arm. Sullivan was soon surprised to find that the term, a seemingly obvious satirization of viral micro-insecurities, started turning up in unironic TikTok videos critiquing yet another internet made insecurity. “I thought the satire would only land if the definition was very obviously describing a normal arm,” Sullivan tells Allure. “No one's arms stay the size of their wrist all the way up—it's physically impossible—so I really thought there was no chance of people taking it seriously.”
The fact that a description of normal arms with an intentionally ludicrous moniker was quickly and easily misconstrued as another real online micro-insecurity speaks to how rapidly we consume body image content and how reflexively we judge ourselves on the grounds of illusive standards without thinking critically about the content we engage with on our For You Pages. Even though most people who devoured the funny “vuvuzela arm” bit were aware that Sullivan was mocking how micro-insecurity content is akin to a snake that eats itself, there’s something uncanny about how the default assumption was that the internet had legitimized yet another made-up body insecurity.
The worst consequence of exposure to micro-insecurities is the very real body shame and self-policing it inspires even in the moments we aren’t online. “Once we start to attend to the micro-insecurities the internet tells us about, it sets up a cycle of consciously or unconsciously pointing at or picking at other small aspects of our appearance and body and amplifying their importance or the extent to which others notice and or care about them,” Green explains. Much of this content is solely being created for engagement and clicks, mind you, but much of it is also born out of real, deep-seated shame. “At best, it’s driven by individuals who have their own insecurities and haven’t done the work to recognize that no amount of facial harmony improves our inherent worth and are projecting some of their own stuff out to you the viewer,” says Green. And shame is often more contagious than we give it credit for.
As we continue to scroll our feeds, it’s important to register that niche micro-insecurities are just another kind of content fighting for airtime within our attention economy despite being factual or not. “Most of these micro-insecurities are things that we have no more control over than we do our height or our shoe size; it’s just how our bodies were made,” Green says. Perhaps the most fearless thing we can do to combat this online reign of endless micro-insecurity is to log off and keep ourselves away from the body image-induced brain rot that only festers us into a calculated, engagement-driven, self-esteem hell.
More on body- and self-image:
How Much Should You Actually Care About Your Cortisol Levels?
Was Fatphobia the Only Reason I Ever Wanted to Have Long Nails?
Now, watch Cindy Crawford's 10-minute beauty routine:
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Originally Appeared on Allure
