In 2020, at the peak of the pandemic, before the first vaccines had rolled out, I took Instagram off of my phone. Peak pandemic had led to peak scroll; those of us lucky enough to be stuck at home on lockdown had too much time to peer into other people’s lives, filtered and algorithmically served up to sate our curiosities and stoke our insecurities. My screen-time reports were embarrassing. I was served an army of beige influencers; from their square frames, they stared back at me serenely in their beige loungewear with their beautiful beige children inside these airy, spotless beige homes in whatever vacation destination they had escaped to.
Where was the mess? Where were the piles of laundry? Books? Toys? Where were the tears? Where was the rage? The…
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Harper's Bazaar (Digital) - 1 Issue, June/July 2024