Kate Giglio 2

In yesterday's class we discussed the "Fakebook" article and how embellished Facebook is becoming. I was thinking about this and how it has changed Facebook. After observing (sounds much better than “creeping on”) many of my Facebook friends I noticed who I thought was the most guilty of this “embellishing.” I think that one the common “embellishers” are mothers. I think that there are two types of mothers that do this, too. There are the mothers of the small children and the mothers of the teenagers. The mothers of the small children seem like they have to post a kabillion pictures of their “17 month old” eating pears, playing with their new toy, playing in the pool, visiting Santa Clause, taking a nap, sitting with dad, and laughing at the camera. And on top of the many pictures they have to make a Facebook status for every time their child tugs at their ear or wakes up in the middle of the night. “Maybe they have an ear infection? Any other mothers experiencing this?”  As for the mothers of teenagers… They “share” those pictures that are like “repost if you love your kids” and they make Facebook statuses about what proud parents they are because their daughter, Susie, got a 2.9 in her third semester of college! And the second type of people who do a lot of embellishing seem to be 13 and 14 year old girls. There are so many mirror pictures of young teenage girls with pounds of makeup on! They make statuses about their weekend plans and the status usually ends with “TEXT IF YA NEED ME! XOXO” I can’t say I am not guilty of being the 13 year old girl on social media, because when I was 13 it was cool to update your MySpace background once a week.

            I started to wonder why people embellish so much. It is because they are trying to prove something to other people, or maybe to themselves? Maybe those mothers are trying to prove to themselves that they are good mothers. Maybe those teenage girls are trying to show their class mates that they can fit in… And I know it seems like I am lumping every single mother and teenage girl into one category and that isn’t what I am trying to do. It was just an observation!