#HarryPotter and a New Dove Study

While watching the Harry Potter marathon on ABC Family Friday afternoon through Saturday night, I couldn't help but notice the words "#HarryPotter" in the top left corner during all of the movies. (Yes, I watched all of the movies this weekend that were on ABC Family...) When I saw the hashtag, it drew me to Twitter to look up what people would actually tweet about while watching the movie marathon. There were a ton of tweets! Some people were bashing the HP series, and others were sharing their love for the series. HP was a part of my childhood, and fans can now share the love on Twitter with people who are watching the same movies. This is just another cool way that social media is bringing all of us together when we sit in front of multiple screens.

Now on to some real social media news...

According to this article on Mashable, Dove recently conducted a study and discovered that 82% of women believe that social media is influencing how we define beauty. This is crazy, but I believe this number! We have stopped letting magazines tell us what beauty looks like, and women are taking control of their definition of beauty. Our friends our showing us what beauty, and the media on television is telling us less!

Take a few minutes to watch this video.

We see so many different definitions of beauty on social media, and we are able to see more natural, attainable beauty in our friends. No one else can tell us what it means to be beautiful especially when there are fewer magazines read that tell young girls how to dress and look. We are no longer seeing that you have to be a size 0 to be happy, but we are seeing the untouched pictures of our beautiful friends. Sure, we are still hearing one thing from our mothers who grew up seeing a different image of beauty in a magazine, but women on social media are hearing a different story about beauty online. We are all beautiful and can post that selfie for everyone to see!

It's time for women to determine for themselves what beauty really is by listening less to outside sources. Now is the time to stop letting others tell us what it means to be beautiful.