The fast-growing fashion industry is highly competitive. Designers come up with new fashion lines almost every day. With the addition of social media influencers to their marketing strategies, fashion trends change within days. All that sudden change and constant need to follow those fashion trends in order to move with the world leaves a significant impact on your mental health.
5 Important Impacts Of Fashion On Our Mental Health
Every designer, influencer, and the model talk about those simple tips that can help you keep up with fashion. Still, no one talks about the impact it has been having on your mental health. Today we are going to unfold the truth, so you know what you have gotten yourself into.
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1. Mental Stress and Fashion
The impact of fashion on your mind is stressful. As mentioned earlier, the fast-changing fashion trends put you under the constant pressure of being able to adapt to the change and follow the trends to fit in. Plus, with the financial restraints and increase in prices, following the popular fashion trends created by those multi-million-dollar brands have become simply stressful.
And the thing is that it doesn’t stop because as time flies, new fashion trends pop up. There is no break from it. Once you jump into this puddle, there is no stopping because the minute you stop, you are labelled as boring, unfashionable, bad-taste in style, etc.
2. Criticism and body image
Not so long ago, fashion was all about design and not about the body. But now, with the technology and the competition in the industry, tactics have shifted. Almost 95% of the fashion trends that you see would be for skinny individuals only. This puts out the need to maintain a specific type of body in order to follow those fashion trends.
But the bodies that you see on runways, billboards, and magazines are not normal. A regular person with a full-time job, kids, and a whole life outside of the fashion business does not have the time or the energy to maintain those types of bodies. This puts your mind under a lot of pressure, and you don’t only receive criticism from others, but you start to criticize yourself. This affects your mood and mental health significantly.
3. Guilt and Addiction
Once you step into the fashion zone, there is no getting out of it. Every time you see a new trend, a new fashion line, an item that you liked in the store, your brain begins to release dopamine which is a ‘happy hormone’ that wakes up that emotional intelligence of yours that makes you believe that you need that specific thing in order to feel happy and complete.
Well, one time turns into two and then three, and the cycle keeps going until I become addicted to buying all new things at the store. It does make you feel good at that certain time, but once you start going through your finances, you begin to feel guilty about the amount of money that you have wasted on things that you probably won’t ever wear.
4. Low Self-esteem
Wearing out of fashion clothing, having messy hair, not so expensive pair of shoes or the perfect makeup look can leave you with low self-esteem. Especially in a room full of people who are properly and expensively dressed. Now, someone might teach you how to make tea and drink it to calm your nerves for a while, but that won’t work every time.
Fashion has become an integral part of our lives. You can’t ignore it because 99% of the individuals around you are following it. If you do not, then, their comments, constant judgment, your own sense of worthiness will leave you feeling nothing but low!
5. The constant need to fit in
When we talk about fashion’s impact on our mental health, the major thing we highlight is the continual need to fit in with the people around you. Whether it is your house, your car, your clothes, or your choice of restaurant, every decision that you make puts you in a bubble. When you want to do the best that you can to fit in with everyone around you – or should we say appear COOL.
This constant need to fit in a group leaves your mind under a lot of pressure. For example, not knowing where to start or how to manage the finances can be difficult but is an essential worry. However, adding more worries like which out of the hundreds of fashion trends to follow, or what is fashionably correct will lead you to depression. The sense of making others happy just by your appearance will get you nowhere.
Takeaways
Just like wearing a nice pair of shoes can make you feel on top of the world, similarly, not being able to get something or to be able to afford something can leave you stressed and depressed as well. In short, fashion and mental health are interlinked. So just like all things, fashion comes with its own set of drawbacks, especially on our mental and financial health. It is best to keep it in check and not overboard it to enjoy a simple, less stressful, and happy lifestyle.
