ARE.

I've been thinking a lot recently about image. Especially social media image. I recently saw a quote that said: "Women should be more concerned with how their lives actually are rather than how their lives appear". How true this is! As women especially, we try to broadcast the glittering "candy coated" moments in our lives. It's only normal. I mean we all want to put our best foot forward, don't we? However I believe that sometime as women we can become obsessed with how our status sounds, how our profile pictures look, and how many followers we have. In the mean time we are neglecting how our lives actually ARE. 

I believe that part of the reason that we try to paint an idyllic picture of our lives on social media is due to an obsessive impulse we have to try and compete with others. Consider the times when you've been tempted to post the photos of your beach vacation in order to "them" how wonderful your life is. Or perhaps after seeing the seemingly never ending influx of selfies in your feed you post one of your own that is much classier.

All I'm saying is that as women we need to remember that we're all human. Before comparing your family a Facebook photo of that seemingly perfect family (with their perfect Christmas card and their perfect house and their perfect life and their perfect dog and so on), think about how many shots it must have taken for her to fix her hair and to get the boys to stop hitting each other. When you see a selfie that makes you jealous of how milky her skin is and how naturally pouty her lips are, consider how many shots it took her with those duck lips in order to find one that actually looked decent, and how much foundation she was wearing. 

All I'm saying is that as women let's stop becoming obsessed with how our lives look on social media. Let's stop believing that other women's statuses and pictures are actually how their lives actually are--because they're not. Instead, let's start focusing on how are lives actually ARE. Because at the end of the day, the statuses and photos do not even begin to contend with the people you actually have in your life.