Lately, opening my Instagram is like being trapped in a funhouse mirror maze nightmare of my own creation.
Everywhere I turn, a distorted image of myself leers back at me, every uninvited ad a self-perception so amplified it stings. I am self aware and savvy enough to understand that I have bartered away my consumer data in exchange for an endless stream of pictures of my high school friends’ children, and — mostly — I can accept the trade off.
But lately, I worry the algorithmic advertising gods have lost the plot of putting the consumer under the delusion of control. Alongside the burgeoning menopause DTC market, Perimenopause Instagram has so exploited the rising concept that women can mitigate these previously unsolvable medical ailments that it has shifted the burden to our wallets, making women of a certain age feel they must solve their health challenges one purchase at a time. And if we do not, we are somehow failing at midlife.
When I reject these ads to say they are “irrelevant” or “I see similar ads too often,” Instagram instead pushes out a picture of myself that also doesn’t quite fit. There are days when the algorithm can’t seem to decide if I’m a young ingenue, a 50-something in midlife crisis, a childless millennial looking for a craft hobby or a smokin’ hot 65-year-old, with a pilates-perfect bod and glowing grey strands. I get it. I’m confused too, but please Meta, make the data you are constantly hoovering up about me work harder.
Perhaps the marketing whiplash is just another metaphor for the schizophrenic polarities of living in mid life. In my late 40s, there are times when I feel hotter than ever, younger than ever. There are times when I marvel at how much energy I have, and how lucky I am to have the means to rage at my favorite concerts, to travel, to dine out. And then there are the mornings after, when my body doesn’t quite recover the same way, the weekdays in the work grind when I realize my middle-aged brain needs downtime and sleep. The way my body doesn’t recover from that challenging HIIT workout as fast as it used to.
Each of these algorithmic journeys comes with their own ailments, which Instagram is poised to cure with one meticulously wrapped e-commerce package after another.
Among its more alarming recent diagnoses: Instagram thinks I’m balding. Everywhere.
Instagram is absolutely certain that my hair is falling out in clumps, but not to worry – there’s a pill for that. My eyelashes thinning? Bring on the serum! And the coarsening of my hair as it grays? Girl, don’t take that shit lying down. There’s a serum for that too.
Also bizarre, Instagram thinks I have small breasts. On this, I am totally dumbfounded. Like, I actually load pictures of myself, with my ample and constantly growing mid-life cup size attached to my body, into their app. And yet, they are regularly sending me ads for the no-bra bra or little triangular things with no lining and no support modeled by waify 20-something influencers.
But someone inside that little portal is looking at my pictures, and they are very sure there’s a lot of things about my face and body that I urgently need to change. I need a red light mask that isn’t one of those “crazy treatments” at all, but instead just makes me look like I’m auditioning for Jason in Friday the 13th.
If the mask doesn’t work, I could always put estrogen all over my face. I also have the option of taking estrogen by pill, by patch or inserting it in my various crevices to prevent shriveling.
Am I experiencing evenings where I feel I might burst into flames mid-sleep cycle? Perhaps the cure is an estrogen bath, accompanied by a CBD, dark chocolate sleepy mushroom mocktail to support both my decaying body and need for zzzzs all in one go.
Indeed, Instagram thinks I march through my days, donning my weighted vest (obviously), like a rabid animal on a quest for protein because there’s apparently something wrong with my belly too. Must be a job for creatine and wall pilates! “To all Menopausal Queens,” it beckons, let’s do this.
Axios recently reported that personal data sale is the Gen Z version of a plasma donation side hustle. A new company called Generation Lab offers $50 or more a month to users who will share their every phone surfing and scrolling move through an app. They then suck in data on your purchase preferences, your content viewing and app usage juxtaposed with demographic modeling to build predictive marketing targets.
Let’s be real – the only way to avoid being ad targeted is to be offline. For many of us, that’s not an option. So kudos to the kids at least looking to get something back for the data they’ve been effectively donating to marketers since birth.
In Instagram’s infinite confusion (or perhaps its trolling ability to know I contain multitudes), it has offered me a small glimpse into the mind fuck that can surround us at major life moment. My obsessive following of every single college my child applied to, as well as my loves and comments on “I got in” posts from around the country has Instagram thinking that perhaps I’m in need of an LWD (little white dress) for graduation.
Graduation Instagram is its own rabbit hole. Who knew there were entire spring fast fashion collections devoted to miniature white dresses – the smallest, frilliest version of Milkmaid Tradwife that seems to be the trend du jour for graduating seniors?
Insta, as grateful as I am for your endless salves for my needs and ailments (which, you remind me, are many), I do hope we can reach some sort of algorithmic sanity.
Because if those LWDs are meant for me, I will definitely need to invest in the wall pilates regimen, full body estrogen cream, that Jason-style red light mask, creatine and several weighted vests to make it work.
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