By Savannah Sisk
We’ve all seen those videos on our For You Pages: “hey, girlies! Welcome to my TikTok on how to get out of your flop era.” The last two words are spat with such disdain you actually frown at your phone. Am I in my flop era? You wonder. I have been laying in bed all day, but that’s just because I’m exhausted from school, which is like a full-time job, and also because I’m exhausted from my full-time job. My room is a mess, but that’s because I’ve been too busy with school and work to clean it. No, you are certainly not in a “flop era,” whatever that even means. You’re just busy. Your initial reaction is to regard the TikTok with suspicion. But the twenty-something woman prancing around your phone screen glows with expensive skincare. Look at how productive she is, rising before the sun itself to make her bed and eat her breakfast of water and dietary supplements! Look at how happy she is, her face ebullient with bliss, as she dresses in her Lululemon athleisure wear and puts her hair into one of those once-problematic slicked-back buns. Off she goes to the gym, sipping from her sixty-dollar water bottle with shiny pink lips. You watch this encapsulation of her day in awe. It is unreal to you, sitting on your bed at two in the afternoon, still in your pajamas. What chutzpah! Behold, how she speaks to you via voiceover in a kind, slightly conspiratorial manner as if you are old friends. Behold the routine itself: breakfast, then the gym, followed by an “everything shower” where you are instructed to use one (1) scalp scrub followed by two (2) rounds of shampooing finished off with the application of a hair mask of your choice.
You sit there in your bed, lank hair falling around your unwashed face as you think somewhat desperately, why can’t I be like her?
I’ll tell you why: money.
It’s money. That is the difference. Our brave new world prizes productivity above all else to the point of disregard for an individual’s well-being. If you aren’t constantly working, you’re lazy. Despite prevalent public opinion, influencers aren’t stupid. They’ve noticed this fixation on productivity, and now they’re capitalizing on it to the detriment of their followers. Because what separates you from that shiny woman on your phone? Nothing much, really, except for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yet due to overnight internet sensations such as Addison Rae and Charli D’amelio who continually profess to be (for the most part) normal people, we are convinced that the influencers they see on social media aren’t that different from themselves. This misconception is harmful. Comparing ourselves to influencers is harmful, as more likely than not the end result is disappointment with ourselves.
But we shouldn’t feel disappointed. Comparing yourself to an influencer is like comparing yourself to Elon Musk. You will never feasibly have access to the millions of dollars that Elon Musk possesses, therefore you will never become a tech magnate. This same logic also applies to influencers.
Bradley (2023) tells us that “26-year-old influencer Achieng Agutu, who had about 488,000 Instagram followers when Insider interviewed her, earned over $1 million in her first year as a full-time creator.” Harshly contrasting this is an article by Haan (2023) informing us that average Americans around Agutu’s age earn a paltry median of fifty thousand dollars a year. In fact, that same article determined that “median American earnings peak at the 45 to 54 age range” at sixty-four thousand dollars a year.
The people who make up influencers’ followings do not have the same disposable incomes as influencers themselves. Howell (2023) states that the average cost of a gym membership in the United States is “between forty and seventy dollars per month.” Annually, forty dollars alone every month for a year will cost the average American four hundred and eighty dollars. Not exactly sustainable for the everyman or everywoman when you consider the current increases in inflation which have significantly increased the cost of living, spurring what the Government Accountability Office (2023) calls an “affordable housing crisis.” Due to modern financial pressures, it is extremely unrealistic for someone making fifty thousand dollars a year to compare their lifestyle to that of a millionaire who has the means to pay for a gym membership, eat only the choicest chanterelle mushrooms from Wholefoods, and drink water from an overpriced, stainless steel mug.
Let us depart from the gym and return home to shower. On ShowerTok, a niche corner of the social media app TikTok where influencers give advice on how to enjoy the best “everything showers,” one routine is recommended by the majority: use a scalp scrub, then shampoo twice and finish everything off with a hair mask. Of course, don’t forget pre-shower care, which includes hair oil which you must massage into your scalp fifteen (15) minutes before your shower. And after shower care must not be forsaken. A good heat-protective spray will do nicely.
On Sephora (2023) the Ouai Cleansing Scalp and Body Sugar Scrub which most influencers swear by costs forty dollars, before tax. The Olaplex shampoo they rave so fanatically about ranges from fifteen to thirty dollars in price. The K18 hair mask they love oh-so much costs up to seventy-five dollars. We’re not even done compiling the entire routine, and already we’re well above two hundred dollars in costs. Remember, these items will need to be repurchased (if we use them at the rate which the influencers recommend that we do,) tri-annually, perhaps even more often if one is especially overzealous with the shampooing. This showering routine is not affordable for most Americans. Additionally, it is highly unlikely that all of these products will work for everyone. Either you go bankrupt in a desperate bid to escape your “flop era” or you go bankrupt and are then disappointed because none of the products you purchased worked.
Additionally, the intent behind these videos is inherently malicious. Unless you, like me, spend hundreds of dollars a year on self care and work out every day, you’re in a “flop era.” It’s the same age-old tactic discovered by marketing companies during the advent of consumerism: if you aren’t buying this, then you are less worthy.
Here arises the issue of time. The majority of people do not have the time to go to the gym every day of the week or take forty minute showers every night (you have to let that hair mask sit for at least ten minutes, you know.) The majority of people are not in “flop eras”. They just live in a society that mercilessly attacks any form of unproductivity. A society where the stigma against any perceived form of laziness is now being exploited. But the majority of Americans are not lazy. They’re just exhausted. Safety + Health Magazine (2022) published an issue reporting that “around three out of five U.S. adults say they feel more tired now then they’ve ever been.” Everyone is exhausted, therefore it is perfectly acceptable to rest when you need to rest. It is perfectly acceptable to take ten minute showers and to not go to the gym at all. It is imperative that we stop comparing ourselves to influencers on social media because influencers do not live in the same world of work, mediocre pay and subsequent exhaustion that the majority of people do. They make thousands of dollars by posting paid ads online in which the clothing/jewelry/makeup they advertise was given to them for free. The lifestyle they promote on their social media accounts is in no way achievable by the majority of people. The majority of people cannot go to the gym all the time or constantly maintain the perfect shower routines. And that is perfectly normal. But unless we stop these unrealistic comparisons, we will forever be trapped in our own (metaphorical because they don’t exist) “flop eras.”
Works Cited
Bradley, S. (2023, September 25). How much money influencers make. Business Insider.
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-do-instagram-influencers-make-money
Haan, K. (2023, May 23). Average Salary By Age In 2024. Forbes.
https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/average-salary-by-age/
Howell, A. A. (2023, July 18). The Average Cost of a Gym Membership- and 10 Ways to Save. GoodRx.
https://www.goodrx.com/well-being/movement-exercise/average-gym-membership-cost
(2023, October 12). The Affordable Housing Crisis Grows While Efforts to Increase Supply Fall Short. U.S. Government Accountability Office.
https://www.gao.gov/blog/affordable-housing-crisis-grows-while-efforts-increase-supply-fall-short
(n.d.). OUAI Cleansing Scalp & Body Sugar Scrub. Sephora.
(n.d.). Olaplex No. 4 Bond Maintenance™ Shampoo. Sephora.
(n.d.). K18 Biomimetic Hairscience Leave-In Molecular Repair Hair Mask. Sephora.
(2022, January 14). Exhausted nation: Americans more tired than ever, survey finds. Safety + Health Magazine.
Savannah Sisk is a sixteen-year-old woman living in Orlando, Florida. She spends most of her time daydreaming about ways to move to New Zealand. She has been writing ever since she learned to hold a pen and has recently been published in the Alcott Youth Magazine, and will soon be published in the Quail Bell Magazine.
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