Hailey Bieber may fit into pretty much every standard of conventional beauty, but make no mistake, she’s fighting imposter syndrome on Instagram as much as any of us. The 22-year-old model just opened up about feeling insecure and comparing herself to others in a long Instagram caption, accompanied by a picture of her smiling and posing, a world away from her typical serious model shots.
‘The truth is no matter how amazing life may look from the outside I struggle,’ Hailey wrote, ‘I’m insecure, I’m fragile, I’m hurting, I have fears, I have doubts, I have anxiety, I get sad, I get angry.’
Talking about the pressure to appear perfect online, she went on to talk about how often she compares her physical beauty to other women. ‘I have had more days than I can count where I’ve found myself scrolling through Instagram comparing myself, comparing my looks, feeling like I’m not good enough feeling like I lack so many things and really struggling to be confident in who I am because I constantly feel like I’m just not good enough,’ she said, ‘Every single day is a confidence battle for me.’
Stressing that she does not want ‘a pity party’ but just to be real, she urged others online to stop tearing each other down when we already tear ourselves down enough. ‘It’s hard finding who you are, but what’s even harder is being picked apart and compared to other women while trying to do that,’ she wrote, ‘There are days that I’m simply broken because of it. It would be incredible if other young girls and women could find it in themselves to lift each other up, to stop making other women who are struggling JUST LIKE THEM, feel incompetent and less than.’
Vowing to make 2019 about growing in confidence and being her completely authentic self, she ended with a note to herself and her fans ‘I am enough, and I’m loved, and you are enough and you’re loved.’
Liked by over 1.6million people, the post stands above the rest of her Instagram as most-loved, (except, unsurprisingly, for the pictures she posts with husband Justin Bieber) and is proving to hit home for many fans.
Of course, Hailey exists in a world that is built around public approval, works in an industry based almost entirely on looks, and is married to a man whose fandom is so perversely obsessed with him they will send death threats to every one of his romantic partners (Hailey herself has been subject to this many times).
Her experience of trolling and being compared to other women is not comparable to the average person, but what many people have taken away from this is that even if you’re so stereotypically beautiful you’re literally paid for it, you can still find Instagram a particularly emotionally damaging place to be.
Placing all of our value in physical beauty is something we know to fight, but when the most popular social media app we use every day is built around pictures of our lives and ourselves, it’s a daily force of negativity to be reckoned with. And while our many failed social media cleanses have proven that it may be too much to ask of ourselves to not be on Instagram, what we can ask is exactly what Hailey wants, to be more real and vulnerable online and create an environment that isn’t filtered. The less we filter our lives, the more we can embrace the beauty that exists within it.