Heading back to work after your week in the sun? Never fear, the internet is still awash with photos of famous people on the beach “enjoying their summer” for you to live through vicariously .
But if lusting after the lives of strangers isn’t enough, your social media feeds will inevitably also be full of loved ones choreographing celeb-style holiday snaps for you to envy.
In an attempt to emulate the celebrity vacation and #livelikeaVIP this summer we’ve turned every secluded spot on the planet in to an Instagram opp – the irony being that when we think we’re seeing celebs on holiday, we often aren’t.
Like this:
Does Nicole Scherzinger, for example, expect us to believe this is how she actually sunbathes? Unless you’ve slipped a disc, no one looks like that when they are relaxing.
Her “vacation” is a protracted personal branding exercise, and it’s not even subtle.
There are celebs who set up paparazzi photos in return for having their holiday paid for on the sly (and, cheekily, then complain about having their privacy invaded).
Then there are the social media starlets who tag “recommendations” of brands, locations, and resorts as part of paid-for-promotions.
These aren’t holidays, people, these are working arrangements.
There’s nothing new in this, it’s how the world of celebrity has been ticking over for years.
What is a fairly recent phenomenon is civilian breaks being besieged by celebrity-copycat Snapchatters and Instagram opportunists who feel pressure to post carefully choreographed photos of themselves in an attempt to emulate their celebrity #inspiration.
I know because I was one of them. I gawped at how the celebs were vacationing and thought that meant I was doing it wrong.
As a reformed holiday Instagrammer, I can guarantee that living like a celeb on your summer holiday is both fundamentally misguided and not remotely as fun as I made it look.
I’ve ruined many a spontaneous family photo with the insistence that it be taken four times and then sent to me immediately so that I can geo-tag and post it.
I’ve made hungry loved ones wait whilst I took a pre-dinner selfie (much easier to suck in a paunch before it’s full of food, but I spent so much time in the toilet taking photos of myself that when I finally returned to the table someone asked if I had cystitis).
I was like a paparazzo, crashing my own down-time and stalking myself. Except no one was paying me, and no one really cared.
Remember holidays pre-Instagram, way back when vacations were private? When they were about actually switching off, without everyone you know watching?
Back in the day, y’know, when you could let your cellulite and untamed bikini hair spew forth from the same gelato-stained swimsuit you’d been wearing for a week, defacing ancient art and decimating local wildlife, safe in the knowledge that no one back home would ever find out? No, me neither, Nicole.
As with most user-generated-content, social media provides both a great force for global connectivity, and a great way of turning your private life in to a unpaid job.
I now admire those who can watch a sun set without Snapchatting it, who don’t worry that their looks will fade if they aren’t immortalised in flattering, sepia-toned filter.
If you have overcome the existential dilemmas that plague me and my generation (a. If you travel somewhere and no one knows, did you even go? b. What is the point of doing something if it doesn’t further your own personal brand?), if you’ve managed to maintain a truly private private-life then I salute you. You’re my new #inspiration.
Featured image credit – Michael Gwyther-Jones/Flickr & Nicole Scherzinger/Instagram