Pinstrosity: Keeping Up Appearances: Attempting to Live Up to Social Media Standards

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Keeping Up Appearances: Attempting to Live Up to Social Media Standards

"This is the Bouquet residence, lady of the house speaking!" (Anyone?!) From 1990 to 1995 BBC produced a television show featuring Hyacinth Bucket (who insists her last name is pronounced Bouquet, not Bucket), described by IMDb as "a snobbish housewife [who] is determined to climb the social ladder in spite of her family's working class connections and the constant chagrin of her long suffering husband." We watched this show as a family growing up. I was just old enough to think some of it was funny, but I didn't get all of it. It's funny now though!

Can you imagine what Hyacinth's Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest accounts would look like?! It would be all perfect pictures with perfect captions because she wants you to think she lives a high class perfect life.

We all know a Hyacinth, or we've seen "perfect" people with perfectly put together lives on the internet. All too often we end up comparing ourselves to the perfect cute little lunches with sandwiches cut in the shape of fish, or the party decor that is all homemade and just adorable, or the seemingly endless perfect outfits coming out of "her" closet, and feeling bad.

Now, none of those are bad things at all. But the comparison is bad. It's easy to look at that one piece of "perfection" and compare our entire lives to it. What you see on social media isn't 100% real life. It's a highlight reel. It's just the best of the best.

Would you hire a wedding photographer who only posted up their shots that didn't work? Nope! So they post their best. Would you be likely to make a recipe if they showed you only one picture of the beautiful finished product and then a series of pictures of the incredible mess their kitchen is in now and how long it took them to scrub that pan? Nope!

This is where the Keeping Up Appearances project was born. Emilee had the brilliant idea for her and I to take a week where we tried to live the perfect Facebook/Instagram/Pinterest worthy lives. Not because we think we can do it and showing it's possible. Just the opposite. Because we want to show what trying to live up Social Media Standards looks like. And we're expecting it to look like insanity.

We decided to set some parameters for us so that we had similar things going on but each tailored to our real lives. Here were the requirements:

Three Pinterest inspired outfits during the week, picked out the night before, layed out, and photo documented, OOTD status.
Three brand spankin' new recipes, documented and using at least one ingredient we have never used before.
Two beauty pins that we haven't used before.
Use two healthful pins for "better living" that does something out of your usual routine.
One or two cleaning tips used in real life.
Two DIY projects during the week.
Date night pin.
Three "life enhancing" pins used during the week.
One or two parenting or pet pins that seem helpful to routines or entertainment.
Squat Challenge
8-10 cups of water a day

Reading that list, it didn't sound too bad. But the more we got planning and collecting the pins for this, the more we realized that maybe we bit off more than we could chew. But, we were committed.

We each spent a week trying to make our lives match up to what we saw online just to show how crazy of an ideal it is, and over the next 7 days we'll show you what we tried, what we did, and how it all went. Check back in each day over the next week as we give you a day-by-day of what attempting to live a "perfect" week looks like...in real life. Heh heh. Update! Now that the series is over, here are links to each of our daily postings from the Keeping Up Appearnaces Project:

Emilee:

Marquette: