Stretched out on a sun lounger, beating the heat beneath one of the white pergolas on the balcony of Lo Scalo in Puglia, I find myself not admiring the view of the Adriatic Sea before me, but instead, the older man to my right. He’s around 60, sunglasses on, and has finished taking drags of a cigarette before leisurely working through a dish of olives, popping one at a time and washing each salty bite down with sips of his white wine. He looks like he’s lived a life: He’s a bit too tan, has a few questionable tattoos, and is sporting a low belly pudge that tells me he enjoys indulging without much negotiation, but what I can’t help but notice is how free he seems. He’s relaxed in his body, seemingly oblivious to what’s happening around him.
And it’s not just him, it’s virtually everyone around me—almost all older people. They have a certain ease about them that has all but disappeared from my Millennial peers, and even more so from younger generations. None of them has their phone out. No one is taking incessant pictures of themselves or the view. There isn’t a selfie stick in sight. And I can’t help but think maybe their sense of ease comes from actually being here, present, not in some fictitious future where they imagine themselves posting European summer thirst traps on Instagram and watching the likes roll in.
It’s almost comical to consider how out of hand this has all gotten, and how synonymous travel has become with image. It used to be culture first, traveler second—you went somewhere to be changed by it. Now it seems to be the other way around: the traveler is the subject, and the culture is just the backdrop. Who needs the Adriatic Sea in focus when your tiny waist and plump ass are the stars of the show, and who cares if you have to use FaceTune to achieve the ideal proportions, am I right?
But none of this is actually very comical at all. With all the blessings that come with being a Millennial—a childhood free of cellphones and social media, yet the young adulthood domination of the platforms and the simultaneous knowledge sharing it’s given us—the trap of social media comparison seems to be one of our curses; in everyday life, of course, but also when it comes to travel.
It turns out we are no longer traveling at all; we are traveling inside an image of ourselves.
What I used to think were normal, passing comments from myself and friends about feeling bloated, missing our workout routines, or fearing incessant amounts of sugar while on the road, have grown in frequency and intent. I noticed it on this trip to Italy, made up of several girls’ trips stitched together into a continuous flow of seeing multiple friends in myriad places. While staying at dream locations like Borgo Egnazia in Savelletri di Fasano, Don Totu in San Cassiano, and Palazzo Daniele in Gagliano del Capo certainly controlled much of the narrative, at almost every touchpoint, the inevitable seemed to happen: Either me or one of my friends would somehow get triggered and thrust out of the enjoyment of travel, and almost every time, it had to do with our bodies.
According to the Mayo Clinic, this kind of talk teeters into the realm of body dysmorphic disorder, a mental health condition in which someone can’t stop thinking about one or more perceived defects or flaws in their appearance—most often something so minor that it’s unnoticeable to others. Research shows that body dysmorphia affects as many as 1 in 50 people, and social media–fueled vacation culture may exacerbate it: a Forbes Health–OnePoll survey of 2,000 U.S. adults revealed that 51% of Gen Z and 42% of Millennials feel pressure to look a certain way before a trip, and 56% have avoided vacations due to body image concerns.
