Since the beginning of this year, I have noticed a rise in the popularity of butterflies. Not saying that they were not popular before, but I did notice them being more prominent. From social media to activism, butterflies have fluttered to the forefront of our everyday lives.
Social Media
The butterfly trend can be seen on social media by the filters that are on the social media platforms. By now, almost all, if not all; social media apps that have a camera option have filters. I have noticed that there is a good amount of filters that involve butterflies. Either there’s a bunch of butterflies around your head or on your face and they vary by size and color depending on the filter. Kylie Jenner even created her own butterfly filter for Instagram to promote her latest Kylie Cosmetics collection. You can see this and various others by looking up the #butterflyfilter on Instagram, it already has 26.2 k posts under it.
Fashion
I have also seen butterflies been used in fashion for more playful, bright moments. Used for red carpets and photo shoots. They can be either the forefront of the outfit or sometimes be used in more subtle ways and be an accessory.
Activism
In the past 20 years the monarch butterfly population has been in trouble. According to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Services, “The monarch Butterfly population has been decreasing.” This is something that is bad because they help pollinate plants and if there is less that means less plants are being pollinated, meaning less plants grow, and then that just starts affecting a whole other ecosystem that relies on those plants to eat and survive.
Also they state “Pesticide use can destroy the milkweed monarchs need to survive. A changing climate has intensified weather events which may impact monarch populations.” Humans are a big reason the Butterfly pollination is suffering. The toxins in pesticides and also the greenhouse gases that humans overly produce have made global warming increase at an alarming rate and that affected their habitat and how they live. The activism has been done to raise awareness of a wild life creature that is in trouble and needs help surviving.
Although, it could be a coincidence, this influx, I noticed; was around the beginning of the year. This was not only the beginning of a new year, but the beginning of a new decade as we entered 2020. I looked up the symbolism behind the butterfly. The butterfly tends to symbolize:
- Powerful transformation, metamorphosis in your life, personality
- Moving through different life cycles
- Renewal, rebirth
- Lightness of being, playfulness
- Elevation from earthly matters, tuning into emotional or spiritual
- The world of the soul, the psyche
Maybe, as a society, we all subconsciously decided that this new decade was a decade for change. We decided to embrace the butterfly and what it stands for. We decided that just like the caterpillar we will have time to grow and prosper till we reach our full potentials and spread our wings and fly.
[ Also I recommend listening to the album Butterfly by Mariah Carey. It’s great and butterflies lol. sorry I couldn’t make a butterfly posts without mentioning the butterfly album lol]
J’s Journal 