Pinterest's Effect on Society: An Essay

Pinterest: the growing corner of the Internet that entraps female minds for hours on end with pictures of elegant wedding gowns and beaded DIY shorts and Neapolitan Rice Krispie treats.  It's no doubt that Pinterest has had positive impacts on Michael's craft supply sales and boyfriends' appetites worldwide, while simultaneously amassing traffic for wedding websites and middle-aged mom-bloggers (or moggers, as I affectionally call them).  But there are other effects, some adverse, others not.

Foremost, Pinterest creates false illusions in womans everywhere.  What are these false illusions?  Well for one, you can't paint your nails to look like they have sprinkles.  You just can't.

Not possible.

Do you have Thumbelina come paint your nails or something?

For another, Pinterest makes fiancés believe that their own weddings will be any thing like the ones featured in bridal magazines.   Let's be real, the backdrop of your wedding is not going to be a sunlit field framed by the Rocky Mountains.  It's going to be a 1970s Lutheran church with blue carpet because your mother won't let you have an outdoor wedding, and you can just forget about paper lanterns at the reception.  Fire freaking hazard.

More severely than that, Pinterest has taken hundreds of original and at times even funny ideas and made them commonplace.  A birth announcement such as the following was a great idea...until it was stolen by five thousand other expecting moms attempting to cover up their impending doom in a last show of comic relief.

Pinterest also makes me want to cook.  It makes me think I'm capable of whipping up a lemony pan-seared salmon with a crust made out of deliciousness and dill sauce in thirty minutes.  NEWS FLASH: I didn't know you could boil chicken until yesterday.   I have planned out meals to cook for my husband and three children.  Do you understand what I'm saying??  Pinterest makes even me want to have babies, and for that it should be condemned.

And all these workout boards!  Give me a break.  Why are you going to feed me pictures of blueberry cheesecake slices right next to some hoe with a six-pack ("feed me"...see what I did there)?  What kind of sick joke is that?  Pinterest is like Girl Scouts.  It's a place for crafts and recipes and dresses, not hardcoreness, and when girls try to make it be about hardcoreness it just becomes stupid and the opposite of hardcore.  I don't care what your ten-minute ab workout is, I care about how you made your own chalkboard paint and whether or not it's perfect for the kids.  It's. That. Simple.

No it's not.

Pinterest, I appreciate what you're doing.  You've taught me how to make old T-shirts into dresses that look like a six-year-old made it, and for that I'm grateful.  But stop feeding me lies about easy cinnamon roll recipes and ways to transform my butt by doing five jumping jacks a day.

Also, don't automatically make me follow people from high school.  It's weird.