"What?"
"Postmodern."
"What does that even mean?"
"Exactly, it's Postmodern."
He swipes left, left, left again. He pauses, flicks through some pictures; swipes left. He swipes right. He swipes left. She zooms in, peruses mutuals, rejects the request. He doesn't like peanut butter; therefore, he's not The One. She seems nice, she's pretty, she's smart. So much potential. Ah! But wait. She liked Evita and I just can't stand musicals. She's a No then. Such are the woes of modern romance. Or so intimates Aziz Ansari in the international bestseller, 'Modern Romance: An Investigation'.
He's right. I've seen such things amongst my peers; heard countless tales of Tinder and seen countless so-called chick-flicks where the main FEMALE character (think tropes like Bridget Jones or Elle Woods) are longing for love and loathing their singledom amidst an inability to bag The Guy IRL (that's In Real Life, the Modern way) and so resort to some means of being set up or finding someone online (note - the Bridget Jones/Elle Woods allusion only extends as far as the ditzy female character trope); and, I've been on the receiving end of people despairing over their lack of romance in real life. Our search for partners is more aestheticised and idealised than it once was, where our grandparents, say, would more readily settle for the person they'd known since childhood or who lived around the block (assuming such an equivalent person exists today as an option). The science and the patterns explored in conjunction with several social scientists and in collaboration with Eric Klinenberg are fascinating and point to undeniable trends in the way romance is perused in the modern climate. People are increasingly reluctant to settle for anything less than The Boy/Girl Next Door (think more Soul Mate than Hey, He's Got A Decent Salary And Seems Like A Nice Chap), are more reticent to settle down in their early twenties, are increasingly reliant upon forms of social media and online dating platforms to meet romantic interests, hold differing views to older generations with respect to such things as sexting and infidelity, and the like. But I'm still reticent to accept it; to engage with it. I still like the notion that you can meet someone in real life (not IRL) and cultivate a relationship which is not dictated by nor subject to the world of virtual reality.
But then, you should question me: is this itself not just another situated, romanticised ideal borne of the ways in which modern romance is conducted? Am I myself not subject to the trap of the Internet, which Ansari so brilliantly highlights? Surely this is just another version of The One, The Ideal?
Ansari writes, "That's the thing about the Internet: It doesn't simply help us find the best thing out there; it has helped to produce the idea that there is a best thing and, if we search hard enough, we can find it."
We no longer are, and truthfully simply can't be, the generation of 'good enough'. We're the generation of choice, of consumerism, of capitalism, of comparison. We want The Best. Do you still have an iPhone 5? Why? Didn't you know there's an iPhone 6? Why do you at least not have the 5c? Upgrade. Improve. Get the best! Going out for dinner tonight? Thinking of that nice Italian restaurant in your local high street? Why? Check Yelp! Then you can find The Best Italian restaurant by you and have The Best pizza. Oh so you've started dating this guy and are thinking of 'settling down'? Are you sure he's The One? Your Soul Mate? How can you know when there are so many fish in the sea? Have you met every guy on earth and know for sure that there's no one better out there? We don't want a life partner, we want a Soul Mate. We're the generation of Hedonistic idealism.
I don't want to discuss modern romance as Ansari discusses it (if you're looking for that, go and read Modern Romance: An Investigation by Aziz Ansari), but to use this idea of the Internet cultivating a sense of entitlement to and dissatisfaction with anything but The Ideal. And I want to discuss this with respect to Snapchat.
I don't remember when I first got Snapchat, but I've used it fervently throughout my first year of university and many people have taken hold of the platform in varyingly and ingenuously creative ways (think SnapVlogs by Caroline Calloway, for example). I'm sure most of you have at least one person who does, or used to, have their profile picture on some social media platform as their face with two dog ears and a dog nose plastered over their features, or with some flowers in their hair and slightly larger-than-life eyes and a shimmering background. Innocent enough. But is the ideal behind these filters innocent or, implicitly, are they part of the broader pervasion of promoting The Ideal aesthetic (and a homogenous, unrealistic ideal at that) on the Internet? I think it's become so normalised that we don't even stop to question the thought processes and performance of such mundane things as Snapchat filters. Indeed, you could just argue that I'm subject here to the fault of much cultural academia in seeking to find resistance and subversion in any and everything. A guy called Certeau published a study in 1974 examining urban pedestrianism in Paris and the ways in which the poetics of walking embodied a form of resistance against the structure of the city; besides being a fascinating read, are everyday patterns of walking really resistive? Some surely are, but is reading resistance into, say, my walk down to the shop to buy bread really of ontological significance? In the same respect, is there anything really wrong about preferring your public image to be replete with dog ears and a nose? Irrespective of this limit to reading subversion into everything, it remains an interesting question to pose. And the ways in which these filters have transcended the boundary of Snapchat to other social media platforms certainly begs the question of their normative nature and performance.
I was talking to my friend Saru the other day about Snapchat filters and the perceptions of beauty they inherently normalise, and, going with the ideal of The Best, filters which slim your nose, change the tone of your skin, hide your nose or give you a cute perception, enlarge your eyes, hollow your cheek bones and whatever else these filters now do, implicitly normalise this idea of what beauty is The Best beauty. Since when was it more attractive to have dog ears and a dog nose covering your face (and a cheeky dog tongue sticking out to boot) than just your face? When you think of the filters for what they objectively are, it all seems rather farcical and, even, demeaning. Saru writes,
I wrote to Chloe recently expressing my concerns with certain Snapchat filters manipulating and distorting the user's faces in ways I didn't think were necessary. I try to be an active informer/advocate when it comes to body positivity, media's manipulation and power over controlling what is deemed beautiful, which then subsequently, unfortunately, in our century dictates what is and hence what isn't beautiful. I do this by speaking up from time to time on my social media accounts. I was shocked at how much of a difference Snapchat's 'standard' set of filters made to my face, especially when I compared a normal unfiltered selfie on my phone's camera to a filtered Snapchat one. Filters, after its popular use on Instagram - think Nashville, Sierra, Mayfair etc. - started off as a programmed combination of settings that play around with the brightness, hues, contrast etc. of your photos. They added a vintage, or a sepia, or black and white effect to your photo. I just didn't understand why the filter with the lei can't simply be one where a lei is placed on my head. Why can't the dog filter simply be me with dog ears, a dog nose and mouth? Why do these filters need to subtly make me look 'prettier' and conform my face to society's standards of beauty? The filters narrow and taper the tip of my nose, slim my cheeks down to enhance the appearance of hollowed out cheekbones. I felt more beautiful and started using Snapchat's camera with those filters even for selfies I was using outside of Snapchat. I was obsessed because I felt like it made me look beautiful - even though, I knew it wasn't what I looked like. Far from it. And, if I'm honest, it made me more self conscious. It highlighted to me all the features of my face that I didn't like because they were limiting me - like if my nose was slimmer, my cheeks were more hollowed and less chubby, my jaw was shaped differently, skin was smoother with no acne or bumps, I'd be more beautiful. People would think I was more beautiful.
How sad is this? Why have we evolved to think that only certain features were what it meant to be beautiful? Why do we care so much about what a person looks like? And why has the extent to which we allow looks to affect how attracted we are to someone become greater? I've actively observed how our social interactions and behaviours towards others have changed; how our platonic and romantic relationships have been affected by beauty standards and social media. A large majority of people I know simply won't consider dating someone at all just because of how they look - that they aren't what society deems as beautiful. Their idea of beauty is subconsciously tainted and distorted by society's ideals and it is incredibly frustrating if you dive deeper and actually make the conscious effort to see how much the media is contributing to this issue. What is even more worrying is when you realise how social media, something that has become a huge part of the majority of our lives (especially in the younger generations where a large majority of youngsters use it on a daily basis for hours on end) actually affects our perspectives on things. For me, I have allowed the media to taint my idea of what is beautiful and as a result I have spent a large part of the last year (after discovering I had an issue with the way I look) trying to undo the unrealistic, unhealthy and quite frankly ridiculous expectations I had set for myself. I have learnt and am continuing to learn how to love myself for who I am and that just because someone of my body shape, height, race, skin tone and features isn't represented in mainstream media, it does not mean I am any less beautiful. YOU define what is beautiful to you, and I had slowly allowed beauty to be deemed as something visual and superficial as looks with the help of the modelling industry, magazines, media, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook etc. when it is SO much more than that. It is the person you ARE: your interests, your actions, the way you treat others, your hopes, dreams and ambitions, your morals, your general being and your vibe. THAT is what beauty is to me and I will not be told by anyone else, no media, no social media, no Snapchat filter, what is beautiful. Setting these generic standards of beauty is simply ridiculous and boring. Beauty is all about the wild, the weird and wonderful to me. It is the uniqueness you bring to the world because there is no one in the world like you. No one thinks the way you think, walks the way you walk, and talks the way you talk. No one has ever been like you and no one will ever be like you. How amazing is that? So I ask, why are we generalising everyone to be this one particular type of beautiful?
It's all rather Postmodern, isn't it? I doubt that sentence, or the opening conversation, makes much sense to you at all - but that's the point. It's not meant to make sense. But you accepted it, because Postmodernism is that which comes after Modernism. That's all there is to it. No point questioning it. It's like modern art. I went to the Tate Modern with a couple of friends a few weeks ago and one of the pieces on display was a Sainsbury's receipt. Our comment (after much joking discussion of its allusion to the student life of Cambridge, where the local Sainsbury's opposite Sidney Sussex college is a regular haunt for students): "Seems legit". More often than not, the reactions I encounter with respect to modern art are reserved notions of acceptance - it's weird, it's random, I don't really understand it, everyone else has accepted it, it's normal now, so I'm not going to question what it means, I'm just going to accept it and move onto the next piece. I was sitting in a friend's room at the end of last term at university, and the group were discussing something intellectual I don't really recall anymore. But someone made a rather abstract statement to which, after some silence, someone else responded, 'that's so Postmodern' (think the flippant 'seems legit'). When I type Postmodern, I mean the ways in which we just accept things in the everyday, like the aforementioned attitude towards modern art. I don't mean to tell you that using Snapchat filters is totally obnoxious and conceited, nor to stop doing so; I merely aim to highlight the patterns of normative performance which it so embodies. Modern Romance is certainly interesting in the ways that our everyday (romantic) lives play out online - but what about the ways in which online platforms such as Snapchat and the aestheticised nature of online dating informs our everyday?
So, the point of this rather jumbled post?
- Read Modern Romance: An Investigation - but with the perspective that this is a very situated account and the challenge of how this informs your everyday experiences. He's convincing, but Aziz is not infallibly right. His portrait of Modern Romance is not the whole picture; it's a cropped, filtered, tagged angle of a broader landscape of several faces. And that's how it should be treated: as a situated, embodied conclusion and exploration. It's definitely a male view on sex and dating. He's sympathetic towards the female experience, for sure. But it's undeniably male.
- Snapchat is great, but it implicitly informs this notion that the Internet has allowed and encouraged of The Ideal, particularly with respect to beauty.
- Sometimes we fall guilty of reading resistance into any and everything. But it's still interesting to challenge mundanities of the everyday and, particularly, the ways in which these are informed by new platforms such as Snapchat and online dating which were not such prevalent forces a short time ago.
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