Obsession with Perfection

With beauty standards set so high – and social media inciting unwarranted negative opinions – it’s no surprise Madison Beer has suffered with self-esteem.

Cover of Madison Beer's memoir The Half of It, photographed by Beth Savaro

Signed to her first record company as a pre-teen, Madison Beer was thrown into the public eye with a naive perception of what that meant. She had a dream: connecting with people through her music. She could’ve never anticipated the amount of hate she would receive online. “Since I was twelve years old, at an age when our brains are still in crucial stages of development, I was subjected to millions of unwarranted opinions about me, my body, my appearance, my personality, and my interests, which reinforced negative thought patterns that I still need years to undo.” Beer writes in her memoir, The Half of It.

Dr Sheena Kumar, a London-based counselling psychologist who works closely with young women in the public eye, tells me, “We’re never going to get away from people’s opinions, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but what is harmful is if those opinions aren’t creating security within yourself, so they’re actually negative opinions – opinions that are unwarranted.”

For any young woman – whether they’re in the public eye or not – navigating social media at such a young age can be incredibly difficult. With the fashion and beauty industries perpetuating this constant desire for perfection, it’s hard not to compare yourself to heavily retouched, photoshopped, and extensively curated images popping up everywhere you look – on your phone, billboards, and television. Coupling this with social media trolls and cyberbullying, it becomes a recipe for depleting self-esteem. 

"I’ve been hurt more by words said to me online than I have by any words spoken to me in person.”

“We don’t realise how much subliminal messaging we’re getting from the TV or social media or even when we walk down the road. There’s so much psychology that – in a harmful way – is feeding our brains so that we think that we want that, or we’re attracted to that, but we’re not even aware of that being a process, so we become used to it,” Kumar says. This obsession with being perceived a certain way is then wired into our brains, with Beer writing, “We are teaching ourselves that our self-worth is inherently based on who else agrees.”

Touching on these subjects in her single, ‘Dear Society’ – released in 2019 – Beer sings of the tumultuous relationship she has with social media, how it’s bad for her health, and yet, how incredibly addictive it is. For Beer, being in the public eye means receiving hate for cosmetic surgeries she’s never had, a mole on her face that a stranger points out in the comments, and either being ‘too skinny’ or ‘gaining weight’. No matter what, she can’t win, and unfortunately, these comments will never stop. Speaking to The Face in 2020, she said, “People can say whatever they want about me, and they’ll continue to, even if I release my medical records to the entire world and it literally says the only thing I’ve ever had done was four years ago [referring to lip filler]. They’re never going to stop.”

In writing her memoir, Beer sheds light on the difficulties, not only herself but others like her face on social media. Nameless, faceless accounts spreading hateful comments may not seem that serious, but for most, it can stay with them for a lifetime. Beer writes, “[O]ne sentence can completely alter the way someone feels about themselves for years to come, especially for young adults online. I’ve been hurt more by words said to me online than I have by any words spoken to me in person.”