Fashion

Our Actual Coconut Oil Use, Instagram Vs. Reality

You are totally obsessed with using coconut oil. Just like the rest of the beauty world, you've become enamored with its seemingly endless uses (Put it on your hair! Slather it on your skin! Use it to whiten your teeth!) and have tossed the rest of your non-natural products right into the trash where they belong.

Or... at least, that's how it appears to all your devoted Instagram followers. That tub of creamy, clearish-white stuff looks so good in an overhead shot next to your homemade chia bowl and fresh pressed green juice. The (recyclable!) glass jar peeks oh-so-perfectly out of your beach bag in that tasteful shot of your toes in the sand on a sunny Saturday afternoon. The colorful label adds dimension to the vanity behind you in your #ootd mirror shot, even if you do use tilt shift to focus the attention on your new culottes.

In reality, getting used to that natural beauty life of mixing and waiting for things to soften and all the other steps that go into prepping an organic face mask can be like, kind of exhausting. It's really exciting for the first couple of days (and you just feel so healthy), but by day five? You've gone running back to your faithful, simple collection of serums and moisturizers with SPF. Not that you'd ever let the IG world know: That glass jar still ends up in most of your photos.

Here's a handy little chart to demonstrate our collective enthusiasm for coconut oil, on Instagram versus the reality of your daily routine.

It's OK. We're all in this sham together. Maybe you can try cooking with it instead?

Images: @travelfoodfashion/Instagram; Lindsay Johnson/Bustle