WILL THE REAL DOROTHY PLEASE STAND UP
The celebrity panel would ask a round of questions to each contestant trying to find the REAL PERSON from the imposters. At the end of the game each celebrity would say who they believed was the real person. The host would say: WILL THE REAL ________ (person) PLEASE STAND UP and the celebrities would find out if their guess was correct or not.
Blackish star Anthony Anderson hosts the current game show To Tell The Truth and the show has been renewed for its seventh season. I loved guessing along with the panel of celebrities who was the real person when I was a little girl. I guessed wrong most of the time.
Today on social media we are like the celebrity panel in a way guessing if the person presented in their PROFILES are who they say they are. CATFISHING has become popular on social media. Catfishing is when someone sets up a fake profile, pretending to be someone they are not, trying to find love, trying to scam someone for money, or just being someone, they are not for the fun of it. The number one tool used by catfishers is the SELFIE.
The first ever selfie was taken in 1839 by Robert Cornelius, an amateur chemist and photography enthusiast in Philadelphia even though it was not called a selfie back then. The word selfie was founded in 2002 when an Australian man, Nathan Hope, got drunk at his 21st birthday and posted a picture of his stitched lip with the caption "sorry about the focus, it was a selfie." The selfie began to grow between 2003 -2005 becoming the modern social media trend it is now.
Besides being used to catch the attention of the opposite sex for nefarious reasons, the SELFIE has a down side for those taking them. Selfies can be manipulated with filters to make the person in the selfie look better than they do in person. Filters are like magical fairy dust sprinkled on a person erasing blemishes, wrinkles, and any other imperfection and has a tendency to make the African American person's skin tone lighter and slenderizes the nose and lips. Filters even changes the eye color to lighter shades of brown and enhances colors of green and blue. The selfie has turned into the at home professional photo shoot with airbrushing at your finger tips.
Sounds great and looks great if I am to be honest. People become beautiful in one click of the cell phone camera button. I myself, love the way I look in my slightly filtered pictures. I'm not a go all the way type of girl but some people post extremely filtered pictures erasing all evidence (features) of the actual person.
Dates have been made using filtered pictures and once the two individuals meet in person, reality hits home and people are disappointed when the REAL unfiltered person shows up. But there is another negative side I keep alluding to for the person who falls in love with their own filtered picture. They too become disappointed when they look into an unfiltered mirror at their own actual face and features.
The SELFIE is causing low self-esteem, especially in women. For years psychologists have sounded the alarm about television and magazines presenting beautiful, edited pictures of women which were not a look the actual woman sitting at home could achieve. The images of beauty presented were an illusion leading the every day woman to feel flawed and inferior compared to those air brushed images of beauty. Now psychologists are sounding that same alarm about the selfie.
Teen girls are using filters to enhance their beauty and entertaining ideas of plastic surgery to alter themselves to obtain those looks in reality. Women of color use or take skin lightening creams and drugs wanting a lighter shade of brown for their skin. Makeup techniques are used to slim noses and increase or decrease lip size. Extensions have found their way to every head including elementary school age GIRLS. I have even seen hair pieces on toddlers in baby photos. We are no longer satisfied with what we SEE in the mirror, which is a dangerous trend.
The everyday person on social media has become the panel of celebrities asking the questions in an attempt to find out if you are an imposter or not. Potential love interests have to hold their breath when they meet and in essence this is when the question "Will the REAL _______ (person) please stand up!" It has become a guessing game as to who are we on social media. Are we all passing off a fake PERSON we wished we were? Have we become not enough for our own selves? Is the man in the mirror as Michael Jackson sung about the real person we want the world to see and know or is it the selfie person of social media we really want the world to know and adore?
At times I even have to say to myself: WILL THE REAL DOROTHY PLEASE STAND UP. It does not seem like the selfie is going to go away any time soon. We will continue catching the right light and angle and oh, yeah, the right filter and post our beautiful picture and wait to receive a thousand likes for the day. We will exhale in relief knowing they liked me/my picture of the day. Our self-esteem is boosted by the thumbs up button people we don't know clicked on. Is who we present to the world an imposter or our true selves and does it really MATTER? Yes. The authentic you does matter and even unfiltered you are still amazing in your own way and you are enough just as you are.
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