Growing up in a Midwestern suburb where obesity was normal, I found the messaging about how our beauty standards are unrealistic and manufactured by Photoshop to be at least sort of plausible. Now I’m quite certain it’s not true. Walking down the street in San Francisco, a majority of the young adults I encounter really are slim, muscular, well groomed, and sharply dressed, embodying the “unrealistic, unhealthy” ideals of my adolescence. I wondered if this was just wealth, but it even extends to people in the service sector.

If Instagram lives are unrealistic, they’re unrealistic in much the same way as coastal megacities. It’s true that most Americans will never live like that. But those people really exist and their numbers are not small.