For Women: Five Things NOT to Post on Facebook
Last February at the IF: Gathering conference in Austin, Texas, Ann Voskamp talked about the ways women compare themselves to other women, and then she dramatically broke a wooden ruler in half to illustrate how we all need to break our internal measuring sticks, the ones that say we come up short. I’ve thought about Ann’s talk a lot over the past eight months. I know I’m guilty of comparing myself to other women. I know I have a tendency to be unkind to myself about my appearance, my mothering, my career, and a whole host of other things. I know many other women who are just as guilty of this kind of self-thought life.
I also know the primary venue where we find abundant opportunities for unhealthy comparisons: Facebook. Society touts the media biz – namely, airbrushed magazine models – as the worst offender, but I think the ways we compare ourselves to other “real” women is even more dangerous to our self-esteem and self-worth. Facebook, after all, tends to be about presenting Pinterest-quality perfection to the rest of the world. If only we all had the courage to post real-time pics of our laundry rooms, like my friend Sarah.
The older I get, and the farther into marriage and motherhood, the more I see that women have so much power to crush each other. And we do it – not like the Mean Girls we may have been back in high school, but unintentionally. The more I hear women voice their insecurities about their bodies, their marriages, and their parenting decisions, the more it’s clear to me that we all have a choice – we can build scaffolding, or we can get out our sledgehammers.
I used to be that person who would say, “I should be able to post what I want. After all, it’s my life. If what I post about my life bothers someone, that’s her problem, isn’t it? That’s something she needs to work on, right?
Friends, God has been breaking me open about this. Our words are so very powerful. Our choices and how we advertise them can lead others to feel judged, to feel diminished, and it’s therefore important to evaluate our words before we plaster them all over the Internet. If I care about the hearts of other women, if I say I’m a follower of Jesus who wants to love and encourage and uplift her sisters, is it really so difficult to be mindful of what I say on social media? Especially when it comes to the topics that have the most potential to tear down my sisters?
I have a dear, sweet friend who wanted nothing more than to breastfeed her infant son, but it just didn’t come easily. Her body and her baby didn’t seem to want to cooperate. She labored hard for every ounce of milk, spending hours and hours every day nursing and pumping, nursing and pumping. She finally started supplementing out of necessity, and with each formula bottle, she beat herself up a little harder. She confessed that she felt like she was failing as a mother. Every time someone she knew posted something along the lines of, “Breast is Best,” she felt even worse. And yet her milk supply wasn’t something she could control. She researched ways to amp it up, but nothing made a significant difference. In the end, she surrendered, put away the breast pump, and switched her son to an all-formula diet. Today, her little boy is a healthy, active two-year-old, but the breastfeeding season was a kind of hell for her, and along the way, there were women who unintentionally made it harder. Should she have ignored the Breast is Best brigade? Well, it would be nice to think she could have. But let’s be honest – we don’t all have that much control over our emotional responses to the things that already make us feel broken, do we? And frankly, that’s okay. We all have pain points, things that make us crumple inside. The more we can do to love and encourage each other through those pain points, rather than unintentionally cut each other down, the better.
Don’t misunderstand me – I’m not asking you to forego celebrating your accomplishments or to stop sharing your passions on social media. I’m just questioning whether or not your Facebook feed is the best place for certain pieces of information. If you have a passion for the environment and you think disposable diapers are the scourge of the Earth, maybe it would be better to start a blog that teaches women about ways to parent with the environment in mind than it would be to post something like, “I just don’t understand why we as a society are still buying disposable diapers! Don’t we know what they do to our planet?!” This sounds narrow-minded and judgmental, which causes all of the passion to lose its potential for positive impact. There’s no context. There are no solutions for the person who has no other options. And yet these ARE the kinds of things we thoughtlessly post. That mom who has no choice but to use disposables because her daughter’s daycare center requires them (oh, and by the way, she’s the same mom who has to work to ensure her family’s needs are met, and being a stay-at-home mom isn’t an option for her)? You just [unintentionally] may have made her feel unseen, unknown, even marginalized. You basically just said to her, “You suck. Your family’s situation sucks. It doesn’t matter how hard you work. Unless you’re a stay-at-home mom for whom cloth diapering is an option, you suck.” Now, I know the above post didn’t actually say all of that, but women are sensitive, aren’t we? We hear more than what’s on the surface. We internalize more than we ought to. And while it’s true that no one else can be responsible for what goes on in our heads, it’s also true that we can be loving and gentle and seek to uplift one another everywhere and in every way that we communicate.
I would simply suggest this: before you post on Facebook, ask yourself why you feel the need to post. Are you sharing a laugh? Lifting people up? Providing encouragement? Trying to educate? Celebrating a hard-won victory? Or are you simply self-promoting to a broad audience in order to get attention and/or make yourself feel good? Looking closely at our own motivations is a good habit. It makes us more aware of our issues, and more apt to deal with them in a healthy way.
Also ask yourself, does this post have the potential to wound anyone? Have I given enough context? Is the fact that my doctors told me I’d never be able to have a successful vaginal delivery, and thus my baby’s birth story is a real victory for me, clear here? Have I told my audience how I deeply desired to stay home with my child and thought it would be impossible until my husband got an unexpected promotion? Would it be better to just share this with a smaller circle of my nearest and dearest? Perhaps an email or a series of phone calls? Just pause for a moment before you post, ask yourself who your audience really ought to be. If you’re like me, you can’t possibly know the intimate story of every one of your Facebook “friends.” You can’t possibly know the potential effect of carelessly delivered words on the hundreds of people with whom you’re not doing daily life. We tend to think of Facebook as a small town, one populated only by the people we want to read our posts. It’s easy to forget about the additional 637 acquaintances who see our chatter in their news feeds.
I do realize that there are some people who just shouldn’t be on Facebook for their own peace of mind. For those whose hearts are deeply broken because they’re 40 and still single, married but struggling with fertility issues, raising a child with disabilities, have recently lost a loved one or a job or a dream, Facebook, with its steady stream of celebratory photos and announcements about engagements and marriages and births and children’s accomplishments may just be too much to handle. And let’s be honest – if you’re going to be on Facebook, you have to accept that those things are just a part of it. Part of good introspection is knowing when to set boundaries with social media, and there are probably seasons when we could all use a complete break from Facebook. But this doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be somewhat mindful of how we share information on social media, either.
So. Here are five things your female Facebook friends (read: not necessarily your intimate girlfriends) can probably get by – and maybe even thrive – without seeing in your feed:
- A one-liner about your baby’s natural birth. If your doctor told you a natural birth was impossible for you, and you made it through in spite of it, then by all means share the victory, but give us more than a one-liner. Tell us why this matters so much as part of your baby announcement. And if you simply feel like you are somehow superior to the women who choose epidurals or have c-sections or never get to give birth at all, then maybe just don’t tell us how much you rocked because you pushed that baby out without the help of good ol’ Demerol. Okay?
- How you’re back into your skinny jeans three weeks postpartum. When most women are still battling baby weight months after giving birth and considering pitching their pre-pregnancy wardrobes altogether, this just feels like a slap in the face. There is no time when women struggle with body image more than post-pregnancy, when everything feels like it’s wider and squishier and falling apart and will never ever be the same again. There is mourning that goes on. So call your besties and celebrate over the phone. We don’t need to know. We don’t need to see pics. And frankly, this kind of post might make us like you a lot less.
- How breast milk is the manna of infant foods, and formula is just pure evil. Women have to or choose to bottle feed for all kinds of reasons, many of them beyond their control. Some experience grief, a sense of loss, or a sense of failure over it. Sometimes babies just never latch. Thank the Lord we have formula as an option. Joining the Breast is Best brigade and spouting anti-formula sentiments isn’t helpful for women who weren’t able to breastfeed, and it is judgmental of those who made mindful decisions not to for their own personal reasons. For that matter, it doesn’t take into account the adoptive moms for whom the presence of formula in their grocery carts is a precious gift. Give the breast a rest.
- How disposable diapers are the scourge of the Earth, and cloth is the only responsible choice. I explained this one above.
- How public school or homeschooling (whatever your education method of choice) is better than the other option. Listen, let’s just not slam the other camp. Homeschooling works for some families and not for others. The same goes for public school. And some parents just don’t get to choose.
I’ll be the first one to admit that I’ve been far from perfect in this area. But I’m committed to working on it – awareness, thoughtfulness, discernment. Pausing before I post. It’s not easy – social media has become such a habit, almost a reflex, and a Facebook presence is a near-necessity if you’re a blogger like me, if you own your own business, or if you’re any kind of a public figure.
Finally, for those of you who are fed up with seeing other people’s perfect Disney or Hawaii vacations plastered all over your feed, their new cars and HGTV-quality renos, the random bouquets they get from their Mr. Oh-So-Wonderfuls, their post-marathon pics, and the selfies from parties you weren’t invited to – I agree, those things can be downright annoying, but they aren’t quite in the same category as the items above. Don’t forget that you have the ability to hide someone from your news feed (for a while) without outright unfriending them, and that might help. Or just take a little break from social media altogether – focus on what you do have. In your real, non-Facebook life. That would probably do us all some good.
Love,
Photo credit: jseliger, Flickr. License: Creative Commons 2.0
