‘Girls are good at looking like they’re having fun, aren’t they?’ a male friend once remarked while checking his Facebook news feed. And it’s true. As women, we in particular know how to use social networking to our advantage. Upload a snap to Facebook, and everyone from your Aunt Muriel to that awful ex knows you’re out having a good time. We constantly remove ourselves from the moment to document and display that moment online. In an age of uploads and updates, we switch from the observer to the observed in an instant. But more importantly, we are editors.

Platforms like Facebook and Instagram are tools for shaping how we are perceived, and women use them best. We’re simply more aware of our Internet presence than men. How could you expect anything less when we’re conditioned to fuss over our appearance and be attuned to every imperfection? Editing is the make-up for the virtual face. We provide our audience with a lens with which to view us. Being both behind and in front of the camera, we are empowered to control how we are portrayed and perceived, and through which filters.

Yet that power exists within a framework that is ultimately reductive. Our capacity to edit and exhibit only reveals our insecurity under the cyberspace gaze. The female relationship with social media is therefore a rocky one. We get a buzz from connecting online, but there’s the anxiety of the tagged photo notification, of wondering if you upped the contrast a little too much. Because we are aware of our online visibility, we touch up and crop out until we are happy with what we see— and what we want others to see. We distance our real and virtual selves, reduce 3D to 2D, and in doing so become defined by a profile picture and cover photo.

The worst offender here is surely Tinder; a dating app that shows you singles currently near your location, and since its launch a year ago has generated over 250 million matches. I had a go at Tinder (purely for the purposes of this article, of course) and although to start with it’s fun and exciting, this soon wears thin. Its dependence on the visual is exactly the cause of this. When you first begin to browse profiles, you might look at their age or even your number of mutual interests, but after a while you focus only on how attractive they are in their photo. In less than a second you pass judgement on whether or not you could connect with this person. The process becomes apathetic. All that’s left is our desire to be validated by our number of “likes”; we need to know that we are seen and appreciated. We therefore become complicit in our commodification, commodified in exhibiting and commodifying in observing. Tinder is ultimately a thinly-veiled meat market.

So if Tinder plays on our willingness to edit and exhibit, Snapchat is exactly the opposite. It removes the need for self-consciousness. The photo you send is temporary and seen only by those you select, so appearing as an idealised version of yourself is no longer a concern. The effect is liberating and refreshing. It celebrates the ugly and doesn’t take itself too seriously. And perhaps these are the reasons for the app’s phenomenal success. But as liberating as it may seem, we remain under surveillance. Snapchat is just another means to display ourselves— only the aim is not to appear attractive but fun.

But aren’t men also commodified by social media? Why is it an issue for women in particular? From models posing naked for men’s magazines to the damsel-in-distress we see time and time again in literature and in film, women’s commodification is widespread and historical. Male commodification is not. By playing to our objectification as editor then exhibitor, we send the message that it’s okay to treat us as objects for someone else’s gratification. When we ourselves are preoccupied with our image above all else, why should others treat us any differently?

The obvious solution would be to look away. But this is easier said than done. For me at least, Facebook is key to my social interactions. We are constantly connected to social networking platforms by our smartphones and tablets. We are so entangled in the World Wide Web that any attempt to escape the cycle of observer and observed would be futile. While taste and touch involve choice, all we need to do to see is have our eyes open. The visual is unavoidable. Women especially are constantly bombarded by images of how we should look and behave. It is only natural that we attempt to recreate what we see, with Facebook and Instagram as our billboards and front covers.

We live life in the eye of the beholder, reduced to the images we display by those we connect with. Our commodification is inevitable. Our only power is in how we are commodified; we choose the role we play but can never exit the stage.