News

<p>We all know that social media is a curated slice of other people&#39;s lives, but it&#39;s still hard to not fall down the rabbit hole of comparison and sadness. Other people&#39;s lives will always seem more interesting and glamorous form a distance.</p><p>Since we don&#39;t see all the grooming that goes into the selfies, or the hours of cleaning that preface a picture of someone&#39;s house, it&#39;s all too easy to forget their lives are just as messy or mundane as ours.</p><h2>After a trip to the local pool, the artist and mother of six Jen Flint took to Facebook to share an anecdote with her followers that quickly went viral.</h2><p>While at the pool, Flint witnessed another mom setting up an Instagram photo shoot with her daughter before promptly returning to a phone call and ignoring her daughter&#39;s requests to swim.</p><div class="oembedall-container sec-iframe sec-oembed-iframe"><div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/jen.flint/posts/10219762658594429" data-width="552"><blockquote cite="https://graph.facebook.com/1157674538/posts/10219762658594429/" class="fb-xfbml-parse-ignore"><p>Yesterday while at the pool I watched a young Mama and her little daughter enter the pool area dressed in very nice...</p>Posted by <a href="#" role="button">Jen Flint</a> on <a href="https://graph.facebook.com/1157674538/posts/10219762658594429/">Wednesday, June 19, 2019</a></blockquote></div></div><div className="ad-splitter"></div><h2>While chilling at the pool, Flint saw a young mother and her daughter arrive in perfectly coordinated swimsuits.</h2><blockquote> <p>Yesterday while at the pool I watched a young Mama and her little daughter enter the pool area dressed in very nice coordinating swimming suits. The mom, with her perfect loose curls tied up in a coordinating scarf, spent the first few minutes talking loudly on her phone to a friend while her daughter stood waiting to get into the pool.</p> </blockquote><blockquote> <p>Mom ended the phone call and proceeded to spread out pool toys and sunscreen on a matching towel. Then after finding just the right angle and the right light, Mama pulled out her tripod and took a few selfies with her daughter. Little One asked to get in the pool. Mama said wait and then posed her daughter in front the pool, then going in to the pool and then coming back out of the pool.</p> </blockquote><h2>The mother quickly laid out a spread of sunscreen and toys out, got out her tripod, and took selfies with her daughter.</h2><p>Once the photos were done, the mom hopped on the phone and ignored her daughter&#39;s requests to swim.</p><div className="ad-splitter"></div><blockquote> <p>Little one smiled big and said 'cheese' like she&#39;d done it a million times. Then Mama told her she could play. Little One walked in and swam around for a couple of minutes. Mama called a friend on her phone and began another conversation while Little One politely and repeatedly asked 'Mama, can you come in the water with me, please?'</p> </blockquote><blockquote> <p>She was ignored. 'Mama, come play with me?' she asked 4 more times. Mama glanced over at her but never got off the phone. After 10 minutes Mama ended her call, collected the sunscreen that was never applied, the water toys that never touched the water, and then her daughter and left the pool.</p> </blockquote><h2>Ten minutes after taking the photos and making a call, the mom packed up the toys and sunscreen and hauled her disappointed daughter off.</h2><blockquote> <p>I sat there thinking about what I&#39;d witnessed for awhile afterwards. I imagined the photos she took being perfectly edited and posted to social media with a caption like 'Pool time with my girly! <a data-ft="{'type':104,'tn':'*N'}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/makingmemories?source=feed_text&amp;epa=HASHTAG" target="_blank">#Makingmemories</a>'.</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><h2>Flint thought about what she witnessed and how the Instagram representation of that mother-daughter pool session would likely make other moms feel inadequacy or FOMO (fear of missing out).</h2><blockquote> <p>Somewhere another Mama is going to be at home with her children, the house a mess from their play, her hair unruly from a day of mothering and her clothes dirty with spit up or peanut butter. She&#39;s going to be tired because she&#39;s spent her day cooking, caring, cleaning and playing with her children. She&#39;s going to look at that photo and she is going to compare herself to the perfect Mama at the pool.</p> </blockquote><blockquote> <p>The Adversary is going to whisper into her ear 'you aren&#39;t good enough... You don&#39;t look like that Mama at the pool... You don&#39;t have money to buy expensive swimming suits like that and you don&#39;t have time to make memories like she is' and that young Mama is going to believe it. She&#39;s going to feel like a failure. Ugh!! She&#39;ll never know that how she spent her time that day was so much better in God&#39;s eyes and in her children&#39;s eyes than that 'perfect Mama' at the pool.</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><h2>Flint wrote that it&#39;s all too easy to scroll through Instagram and make stories about other people&#39;s lives that are inaccurate, and likewise, it&#39;s easy to present a version of your life that is glossed over.</h2><blockquote> <p>What we see on Social Media isn&#39;t always real. Sometimes and often it&#39;s a complete set-up. It&#39;s staged and filtered and it&#39;s counterfeit.</p> </blockquote><h2>Even the glamorous moments that are real are just that: moments that quickly pass into the next thing.</h2><blockquote> <p>Sometimes we do see absolutely real photos of vacations and beautiful homes and freshly done hair but it&#39;s only ONE moment. It&#39;s the very best moment out of a whole day spent much like our own. Working, cleaning, and messes...</p> </blockquote><h2>Flint finished off her post by sharing that moms shouldn&#39;t feel bad about themselves for having messy houses or not living a photo perfect life, especially if that means you&#39;re getting real quality time with your kids.</h2><blockquote> <p>Mamas, don&#39;t compare yourself. You ARE enough! You are amazing and the very best part is that you are REAL! Your dirty shirt and your messy house and your happy children are real and they are proof that you are doing it right!</p> </blockquote><h2>A lot of moms chimed in to thank Flint for the reminder that comparing your life to someone else&#39;s social media feed is toxic and inaccurate.</h2><figure class="image"><div class="image-container"><img alt="" data-attribution="Facebook" data-attribution-url="https://www.facebook.com/jen.flint?fref=nf&amp;__tn__=%2Cdm-R-R&amp;eid=ARDmCvNVjF6CS4q3hLFQh69a5ajIR6EiK_DryMpVf-WAWfC0XaxGzXiVWLP2x-45cbP2ioEfHsCTOh_N" height="234" src="//cdn.someecards.com/posts/liliana-8uPmgc.jpg" width="700" /></div> <figcaption></figcaption> <div class="image-attribution"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/jen.flint?fref=nf&amp;__tn__=%2Cdm-R-R&amp;eid=ARDmCvNVjF6CS4q3hLFQh69a5ajIR6EiK_DryMpVf-WAWfC0XaxGzXiVWLP2x-45cbP2ioEfHsCTOh_N">Facebook</a></div></figure><div className="ad-splitter"></div><figure class="image"><div class="image-container"><img alt="" data-attribution="Facebook" data-attribution-url="https://www.facebook.com/jen.flint?fref=nf&amp;__tn__=%2Cdm-R-R&amp;eid=ARDmCvNVjF6CS4q3hLFQh69a5ajIR6EiK_DryMpVf-WAWfC0XaxGzXiVWLP2x-45cbP2ioEfHsCTOh_N" height="516" src="//cdn.someecards.com/posts/fb-b8GC0m.jpg" width="700" /></div> <figcaption></figcaption> <div class="image-attribution"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/jen.flint?fref=nf&amp;__tn__=%2Cdm-R-R&amp;eid=ARDmCvNVjF6CS4q3hLFQh69a5ajIR6EiK_DryMpVf-WAWfC0XaxGzXiVWLP2x-45cbP2ioEfHsCTOh_N">Facebook</a></div></figure><div className="ad-splitter"></div><h2>Still, others thought that Flint&#39;s post effectively mom-shamed the other woman.</h2><figure class="image"><div class="image-container"><img alt="" data-attribution="Facebook" data-attribution-url="https://www.facebook.com/jen.flint?fref=nf&amp;__tn__=%2Cdm-R-R&amp;eid=ARDmCvNVjF6CS4q3hLFQh69a5ajIR6EiK_DryMpVf-WAWfC0XaxGzXiVWLP2x-45cbP2ioEfHsCTOh_N" height="728" src="//cdn.someecards.com/posts/momshame-x2Ujex.jpg" width="700" /></div> <figcaption></figcaption> <div class="image-attribution"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/jen.flint?fref=nf&amp;__tn__=%2Cdm-R-R&amp;eid=ARDmCvNVjF6CS4q3hLFQh69a5ajIR6EiK_DryMpVf-WAWfC0XaxGzXiVWLP2x-45cbP2ioEfHsCTOh_N">Facebook</a></div></figure><div className="ad-splitter"></div><p>In fact, Flint&#39;s post blew up with so many comments that she made a follow-up post a few days later to clarify that her original story wasn&#39;t mean to shame the other mom, but instead shine a light on how misleading Instagram can be.</p><div class="oembedall-container sec-iframe sec-oembed-iframe"><div class="fb-post" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/jen.flint/posts/10219779593657795" data-width="552"><blockquote cite="https://graph.facebook.com/1157674538/posts/10219779593657795/" class="fb-xfbml-parse-ignore"><p>Ho. Ly. Moly! A girl puts a few thoughts to words and decides to share them with her 700ish Facebook friends and y&#039;all...</p>Posted by <a href="#" role="button">Jen Flint</a> on <a href="https://graph.facebook.com/1157674538/posts/10219779593657795/">Friday, June 21, 2019</a></blockquote></div></div><div className="ad-splitter"></div><p>She wrote:</p><blockquote> <p>Ho. Ly. Moly!</p> <p>A girl puts a few thoughts to words and decides to share them with her 700ish Facebook friends and y&#39;all go crazy with it.</p> <p>My 'pool' post has officially gone viral. That&#39;s just madness.</p> </blockquote><blockquote> <p>But, since I have your attention, I&#39;d like to add some thoughts about the post because it appears that the context of my words had been misconstrued.</p> <p>While I do feel like our children deserve our attention and we all do need to put our phones down and really be present with our family and friends, that was not the message I was sharing.</p> </blockquote><h2>Flint shared that she had no intention to shame the other mom, and knows she was doing her best as all parents do.</h2><blockquote> <p>I, in no way, meant to shame or judge this pool Mama for her actions. I don&#39;t know why she behaved the way she did and honestly I don&#39;t care. I&#39;m sure she had her reasons. We all do. She is just a Mama doing her best too. Shaming her was also not what my post was about. I was not pointing fingers. I was not insinuating that I was better than her. I was not pinning stay-at-home moms against working moms.</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><blockquote> <p>I was not shaming anyone for taking photos of themselves or their children. C&#39;mon y&#39;all, preserving memories is often just as important as making them, right?! I was not shaming people for reading a book at the park while their little ones play on the swings. Please don&#39;t hate on others for doing things differently. Don&#39;t judge the mom at the pool who couldn&#39;t get in the water with her kids that day so she played Candy Crush on the sidelines (Hello! That was ME!!)</p> </blockquote><h2>The purpose of the original post was to remind other moms that the gorgeous and jealousy inducing Instagram photos are never the full story.</h2><blockquote> <p>The sole intent of my post and what I hope you take away from it is this... The beautiful, perfect, filtered photos that pass by our eyes as we scroll on social media are not a full depiction of real life. They are staged (either for someone else&#39;s self worth or because a company is paying for those staged photos to entice you to buy whatever it is they are selling).</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><blockquote> <p>They may also just be a beautiful photo of a child laughing, a momma having a good hair day, an exquisite meal or a tropical paradise, but they are just a glimpse of a perfect MOMENT. Is there harm in taking photographs of those moments and sharing them? No! Y&#39;all know that I do it too!</p> </blockquote><h2>At the end of the day, Flint just wanted to remind herself and others to stop comparing and have a little more grace for themselves.</h2><blockquote> <p>The ONLY take-away that I intended for you to get from my 'pool post' is not to compare your whole self and your whole life to one perfect moment that you see on social media. Don&#39;t feel less than enough because what you see on a screen looks 'better' than your real life. The scene that I saw at the pool was the opposite of what I would have imagined had happened had I just scrolled social media and saw her beautiful photo. That is the point. That is why I painted the detailed picture for you to see. So that you understand that what we see on social media is not the whole truth. THAT is the only point I intended to share with y&#39;all.</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><blockquote> <p>'We spend so much time and energy comparing ourselves to others&mdash;usually comparing our weaknesses to their strengths. This drives us to create expectations for ourselves that are impossible to meet. As a result, we never celebrate our good efforts because they seem to be less than what someone else does.' - Dieter F. Uchtdorf</p> </blockquote><blockquote> <p>We are enough, just how we are. Remember that YOU at home with your kids or YOU at work supporting your family or YOU with the spotless house or YOU with the small apartment or YOU with an extra 30 lbs of weight that&#39;s you&#39;d rather not have, YOU are enough. Don&#39;t compare yourself or your situation to anyone else&#39;s. Comparison is the thief of joy, y&#39;all!</p> </blockquote><blockquote> <p>If you share my post, remember the intent. Please don&#39;t share it with the intent of shaming a mother for doing it differently than you do.</p> <p>Much love to y&#39;all.</p> </blockquote><div className="ad-splitter"></div><p>Based on how many responses both her original and follow-up post have received, it&#39;s safe to say that Flint has touched on a topic that a lot of people feel strongly about. Social media can be a fantastic tool for meeting people and maintaining friendships, but it can also easily transform into rabbit hole of shame and FOMO. It&#39;s healthy to remember that no picture represents someone&#39;s whole life.</p><div className="ad-splitter"></div>

Woman sparks debate about Instagram culture after seeing 'faked' family pool photos.

Bronwyn Isaac

We all know that social media is a curated slice of other people&#39;s lives, but it&#39;s still hard to not fall down the rabbit hole of comparison and sadness. Other people&#39;s lives will always seem more interesting and glamorous form a distance.Since we don&#39;t see all the grooming that goes into the selfies, or the hours of cleaning that preface a picture of someone&#39;s house, it&#39;s all too easy to forget their lives are just as messy or mundane as ours.After a trip to the local pool, the artist and mother of six Jen Flint took to Facebook to share an anecdote with her followers that quickly went viral.While at the pool, Flint witnessed another mom setting up an Instagram photo shoot with her daughter before promptly returning to a phone call and ignoring her daughter&#39;s requests to swim.Yesterday while at the pool I watched a young Mama and her little daughter enter the pool area dressed in very nice...Posted by Jen Flint on Wednesday, June 19, 2019While chilling at the pool, Flint saw a young mother and her daughter arrive in perfectly coordinated swimsuits. Yesterday while at the pool I watched a young Mama and her little daughter enter the pool area dressed in very nice coordinating swimming suits. The mom, with her perfect loose curls tied up in a coordinating scarf, spent the first few minutes talking loudly on her phone to a friend while her daughter stood waiting to get into the pool.  Mom ended the phone call and proceeded to spread out pool toys and sunscreen on a matching towel. Then after finding just the right angle and the right light, Mama pulled out her tripod and took a few selfies with her daughter. Little One asked to get in the pool. Mama said wait and then posed her daughter in front the pool, then going in to the pool and then coming back out of the pool. The mother quickly laid out a spread of sunscreen and toys out, got out her tripod, and took selfies with her daughter.Once the photos were done, the mom hopped on the phone and ignored her daughter&#39;s requests to swim. Little one smiled big and said 'cheese' like she&#39;d done it a million times. Then Mama told her she could play. Little One walked in and swam around for a couple of minutes. Mama called a friend on her phone and began another conversation while Little One politely and repeatedly asked 'Mama, can you come in the water with me, please?'  She was ignored. 'Mama, come play with me?' she asked 4 more times. Mama glanced over at her but never got off the phone. After 10 minutes Mama ended her call, collected the sunscreen that was never applied, the water toys that never touched the water, and then her daughter and left the pool. Ten minutes after taking the photos and making a call, the mom packed up the toys and sunscreen and hauled her disappointed daughter off. I sat there thinking about what I&#39;d witnessed for awhile afterwards. I imagined the photos she took being perfectly edited and posted to social media with a caption like 'Pool time with my girly! #Makingmemories'. Flint thought about what she witnessed and how the Instagram representation of that mother-daughter pool session would likely make other moms feel inadequacy or FOMO (fear of missing out). Somewhere another Mama is going to be at home with her children, the house a mess from their play, her hair unruly from a day of mothering and her clothes dirty with spit up or peanut butter. She&#39;s going to be tired because she&#39;s spent her day cooking, caring, cleaning and playing with her children. She&#39;s going to look at that photo and she is going to compare herself to the perfect Mama at the pool.  The Adversary is going to whisper into her ear 'you aren&#39;t good enough... You don&#39;t look like that Mama at the pool... You don&#39;t have money to buy expensive swimming suits like that and you don&#39;t have time to make memories like she is' and that young Mama is going to believe it. She&#39;s going to feel like a failure. Ugh!! She&#39;ll never know that how she spent her time that day was so much better in God&#39;s eyes and in her children&#39;s eyes than that 'perfect Mama' at the pool. Flint wrote that it&#39;s all too easy to scroll through Instagram and make stories about other people&#39;s lives that are inaccurate, and likewise, it&#39;s easy to present a version of your life that is glossed over. What we see on Social Media isn&#39;t always real. Sometimes and often it&#39;s a complete set-up. It&#39;s staged and filtered and it&#39;s counterfeit. Even the glamorous moments that are real are just that: moments that quickly pass into the next thing. Sometimes we do see absolutely real photos of vacations and beautiful homes and freshly done hair but it&#39;s only ONE moment. It&#39;s the very best moment out of a whole day spent much like our own. Working, cleaning, and messes... Flint finished off her post by sharing that moms shouldn&#39;t feel bad about themselves for having messy houses or not living a photo perfect life, especially if that means you&#39;re getting real quality time with your kids. Mamas, don&#39;t compare yourself. You ARE enough! You are amazing and the very best part is that you are REAL! Your dirty shirt and your messy house and your happy children are real and they are proof that you are doing it right! A lot of moms chimed in to thank Flint for the reminder that comparing your life to someone else&#39;s social media feed is toxic and inaccurate.  Facebook  FacebookStill, others thought that Flint&#39;s post effectively mom-shamed the other woman.  FacebookIn fact, Flint&#39;s post blew up with so many comments that she made a follow-up post a few days later to clarify that her original story wasn&#39;t mean to shame the other mom, but instead shine a light on how misleading Instagram can be.Ho. Ly. Moly! A girl puts a few thoughts to words and decides to share them with her 700ish Facebook friends and y&#039;all...Posted by Jen Flint on Friday, June 21, 2019She wrote: Ho. Ly. Moly! A girl puts a few thoughts to words and decides to share them with her 700ish Facebook friends and y&#39;all go crazy with it. My 'pool' post has officially gone viral. That&#39;s just madness.  But, since I have your attention, I&#39;d like to add some thoughts about the post because it appears that the context of my words had been misconstrued. While I do feel like our children deserve our attention and we all do need to put our phones down and really be present with our family and friends, that was not the message I was sharing. Flint shared that she had no intention to shame the other mom, and knows she was doing her best as all parents do. I, in no way, meant to shame or judge this pool Mama for her actions. I don&#39;t know why she behaved the way she did and honestly I don&#39;t care. I&#39;m sure she had her reasons. We all do. She is just a Mama doing her best too. Shaming her was also not what my post was about. I was not pointing fingers. I was not insinuating that I was better than her. I was not pinning stay-at-home moms against working moms.  I was not shaming anyone for taking photos of themselves or their children. C&#39;mon y&#39;all, preserving memories is often just as important as making them, right?! I was not shaming people for reading a book at the park while their little ones play on the swings. Please don&#39;t hate on others for doing things differently. Don&#39;t judge the mom at the pool who couldn&#39;t get in the water with her kids that day so she played Candy Crush on the sidelines (Hello! That was ME!!) The purpose of the original post was to remind other moms that the gorgeous and jealousy inducing Instagram photos are never the full story. The sole intent of my post and what I hope you take away from it is this... The beautiful, perfect, filtered photos that pass by our eyes as we scroll on social media are not a full depiction of real life. They are staged (either for someone else&#39;s self worth or because a company is paying for those staged photos to entice you to buy whatever it is they are selling).  They may also just be a beautiful photo of a child laughing, a momma having a good hair day, an exquisite meal or a tropical paradise, but they are just a glimpse of a perfect MOMENT. Is there harm in taking photographs of those moments and sharing them? No! Y&#39;all know that I do it too! At the end of the day, Flint just wanted to remind herself and others to stop comparing and have a little more grace for themselves. The ONLY take-away that I intended for you to get from my 'pool post' is not to compare your whole self and your whole life to one perfect moment that you see on social media. Don&#39;t feel less than enough because what you see on a screen looks 'better' than your real life. The scene that I saw at the pool was the opposite of what I would have imagined had happened had I just scrolled social media and saw her beautiful photo. That is the point. That is why I painted the detailed picture for you to see. So that you understand that what we see on social media is not the whole truth. THAT is the only point I intended to share with y&#39;all.  'We spend so much time and energy comparing ourselves to others&mdash;usually comparing our weaknesses to their strengths. This drives us to create expectations for ourselves that are impossible to meet. As a result, we never celebrate our good efforts because they seem to be less than what someone else does.' - Dieter F. Uchtdorf  We are enough, just how we are. Remember that YOU at home with your kids or YOU at work supporting your family or YOU with the spotless house or YOU with the small apartment or YOU with an extra 30 lbs of weight that&#39;s you&#39;d rather not have, YOU are enough. Don&#39;t compare yourself or your situation to anyone else&#39;s. Comparison is the thief of joy, y&#39;all!  If you share my post, remember the intent. Please don&#39;t share it with the intent of shaming a mother for doing it differently than you do. Much love to y&#39;all. Based on how many responses both her original and follow-up post have received, it&#39;s safe to say that Flint has touched on a topic that a lot of people feel strongly about. Social media can be a fantastic tool for meeting people and maintaining friendships, but it can also easily transform into rabbit hole of shame and FOMO. It&#39;s healthy to remember that no picture represents someone&#39;s whole life.