I'm concerned about the beauty standard brain rot, too. It seems impossible to get away from--even in the body positive space, for example, people will say "eff your beauty standards" with regard to weight, but act fine with kowtowing to all the *other* standards (thick, voluminous hair, plump lips, big eyes, long lashes, etc. etc.). There are comparatively few people out there talking about how damaging all beauty standards are, and how being "hot" ought not to be the pinnacle of your life's purpose. I feel like the whole thing is like some beauty standard version of the prisoner's dilemma--people doing something (whatever they can to be hot) to make their individual life better--since pretty people are treated better--while those same actions worsen the lot of the community (particularly women) as a whole--as we experience a sort of "aesthetic inflation" wherein everyone has to do more and more to even be considered "mid."
You hit the nail on the head. I find the most vocal critics of body positivity to be misogynistic men, and the most ardent supporters to be women of all sorts of phenotypes. Supporting body positivity which I'll define as not conforming to beauty standards is a public virtue signal that makes one seem kind and compassionate to peers while also potentially reducing sexual competition. Particularly if she in private still strives for the .7 hip to waist ratio and smooth skin.
The reverse- a woman who publicly denounces body positivity, yet privately practices it isn't a thing it doesn't make sense at all really
I hate this as much as i hate the concept of ‘high value women’!! Honestly i am going to hold onto my SANE boyfriend with both hands because if i have to enter todays dating market (I was only last in the dating marketing in 2018!!) i would go insane. Why can’t we look HUMAN ANYMORE !!!! Obv i know not all men but it’s crazy what is expected of us. What these people (men) gonna do when we’re all old and deflated and less hot ?! Anywho LOVE you writing as ALWAYS
Thank you Isabelle! I have to say, to inject some sanity into the proceedings ... I really don't think these wild opinions represent even most (certainly not all) men/people. Most people are Not Online and are boring and have probably very middle of the road feelings about things and don't expect women to look like aliens. I have to believe! I think it's more that the subset of the culture that IS very loud about this stuff has a way of taking over *online*. IRL, I have had convos where men/women were talking about the most beautiful woman they'd ever seen etc. and she was not alien-like!
I honestly wonder if it’s even men who like this alien look. I dont think so. It seems like a trendy face so maybe it’s the fashion industry perpetuating this ideal?
but, like, that's clearly a cope? We can't be taking these things seriously? Obviously he would piss himself if he accidentally ended up in the same room as her.
One of the best ways to deconstruct one’s own beauty standards, I’ve found, is by learning how to draw. For six years I studied portrait drawing with a Chicago artist, and I was amazed by how hard it was just to see a person clearly. Before we could get any kind of likeness, we’d spend two, 2 1/2 hour sessions in front of a live model and many more hours working up the drawing at home. Slowly but surely, so-called plain people became wondrous before my eyes and something very much like love would emerge.
How to educate the eyes of people in general is, unfortunately, much more difficult, given that some kind of “look” is always being pushed to make a buck.
Good lord, I’m glad I’m “old” (post menopausal at 58) and can’t be bothered to care about this. I have grey hair and cellulite and *gasp* a sagging jawline. Let’s normalize normal faces.
Your writing here: “But things are changing. I often watch movies and shows from the 90s and early 2000s and think, “Jesus, people looked … normal.” They weren’t all angles and sucked cheeks and hard edges. I don’t know how else to describe it, they looked realer. Like you could reach out and touch them and feel the warmth of a messy little human instead of the cold contours of a person-like bust in a museum. The former is more beautiful to me at this point in my life, perhaps because I worry it’ll disappear.”
---Yes. Thank you for writing this. This is exactly what I’ve been thinking watching some older movies now. People. Used. To. Look. REAL. And I had no idea how much filler everyone has now. In lips. Oh my god and god knows knows where else.
I feel like I constantly see more and more ways to categorize women based on appearance often being spread by other women, and it makes me think about how much harder it's been getting to be a teen/young girl as the internet has progressed. "girl pretty, boy pretty" "rat pretty, mouse pretty," and now "stereotypically plainly pretty?" I don't think our brains were meant to be this hyperaware about our appearances, ever. Definitely a brain rot moment.
Zeynab Mohamed just wrote about this, and the concept of "high and low visual weight" on TikTok, and I felt about 10,000 years old and also deeply depressed. Like, what? We had to worry about our body weight and now our FACE WEIGHT?
thanks for the rec! it definitely is a great read following this post -- the stats about cosmetic surgery and instagram worsening teen girls' mental health are both alarming and unsurprising. i noticed these effects on my mental health even with just snapchat filters when i was younger, but i feel like the detrimental effects are exponentially spiraling and getting worse and worse.
Great read! Your line "...it would still be another way we’re supposed to be besides whatever we are." is sticking with me. It reminds how impossible and damaging it can be to try and follow any of these ultimately fleeting trends.
I imagine many trans people's motivations/experience is more nuanced and complex than this but I'm not the person to speak to about how much this comes into play
I think so too. But, on the other hand, there is a seeming epidemic of girls just rejecting female-hood... choosing no-gender or boy-gender - or anything besides our current straight-jackets of female-hood, and I cannot help but wonder if it's related.
When I was a teenager (mid 2010s) I did think I was nonbinary for a few years, and it was precisely for this reason. I thought that I didn't "feel feminine" and that it meant that I wasn't a girl. Eventually I realized that I am most certainly a woman, and that everyone in my life who told me that being a girl = feeling feminine had done me a disservice. The reality is that gender norms are ideals, often unachievable ones; this goes for both women and men, although I would say that achieving the ideal of femininity is oppressive to women and typically liberating to men. It seems that in the past decade young people have become preoccupied with "passing" as their own biological sex, and this is deeply unhealthy.
Was looking forward to reading this piece when you mentioned it in Notes and it did not disappoint! Instagram face is getting out of hand and even as a 33 year old woman, I still cant help comparing myself at times when I scroll. But if Im being honest, I like my face a whole lot more than these 10 pounds of makeup, plastic highlighted looks that just seem impossible (and uncomfortable!) to achieve. Thanks for writing about this. Its all brain rot for sure
I am consumed with concern about this. Not to mention the money, time and suffering spent on achieving these insane homogenized beauty standards. I see 8 year olds going through their night time skin care routine on til Tok and wonder where the childhoods have gone. Teenagers talking about biotin and twenty somethings talking about retinol. My friends in their late thirties are booking in their facelifts. Deep set eyes are now called “hooded” eyes, and everyone is having eye lifts to get rid of what is such a beautiful and unique feature. (blepharofuckmes.) Everyone is shredding their perfectly healthy skin care barrier. I had to leave LA, because nobody I knew at my age or older had a face that moved anymore and it was freaking me out. I love growing older, and I want to stay in love with growing older, and accepting my growing, strong nose, and my wide face, and my smile lines. I can’t do that in a place where the filter has made its way off line, and intothe supermarkets, at work and even the schools.
Thank you for writing about it so succinctly. I have restacked. x
The utter relief I felt leaving LA and not seeing frozen, tweaked faces everywhere. I'm seeing it more and more in London which makes me so sad-- it's one of the things I loved so much about the UK. But it's still way better: a girl can still pull on wits alone.
Oh my gosh, the thesis on this (or what I saw as the thesis: "You see girls like her, and girls who are even more striking and glamorous, in your phone every day and it’s rotting your brain") is absolutely perfect. Very little I could think to add to this discussion, other than that: I'm curious if people might interpret Tate McRae's beauty (maybe attractiveness is a better word?) differently if more of them knew that she was a dancer before she was a pop star. To me, the latter identity links beauty to something more static, while the former links it to something more, dare I say, "athletic." Not all pop stars are as physically dynamic, but dance is an inherently physical artform. Maybe the discourse about Tate would be different if people knew more about this side of her artistry. Maybe they do, and I'm just clueless lol.
that's an interesting point!! i wonder if people subconsciously think about what else the person "brings to the table" so to speak, when deeming them "mid". Still sucks to be judged that way though!
Absolutely love this. I'm one of those bronde regular girls (well, woman). I've had men think I'm over the top gorgeous. And I've had some tell me I'm barely a 5 at best. Some people say that what I lack physically I make up for inwardly in drive, accomplishment, etc. I've had others say that success and intelligence don't add to attractiveness (which I think is laughably insane). It really gets down to how you feel about yourself. But the world really does make it hard to see the best parts of ourselves when we look in the mirror.
"I think being a person on the internet has helped me divest from compliments as a confidence booster, because it’s usually one of two reactions: People who don’t like the writing will say, 1.) “You can’t talk about beauty culture because you have pretty privilege,” or, 2). “I’m not going to listen to anything about beauty from somebody who looks like you,” suggesting I’m ugly. That has strangely helped me—it’s all fucking perception, it’s not real, what I look like is not part of the value that I bring to the table."
I have 2 tween/teen girls, so this sort of commentary about plainness bothers me, as does what qualifies as beauty (filled/plastic surgery/ ai enhanced). I also see the young girls rejecting what seems to have been embraced by young millennials/older gen z. They find fakeness gross, but I am not yet assured they can reject the push to become consumers of beauty culture. I have loads of hope, because I see my kids throwing aside screentime for in person interaction and real life. They want to make things.
this is really interesting, that they find fakeness gross but that doesn't extend to beauty culture. never thought about it that way. I'm glad your kids are into IRL things, I hope that continues!
I'm concerned about the beauty standard brain rot, too. It seems impossible to get away from--even in the body positive space, for example, people will say "eff your beauty standards" with regard to weight, but act fine with kowtowing to all the *other* standards (thick, voluminous hair, plump lips, big eyes, long lashes, etc. etc.). There are comparatively few people out there talking about how damaging all beauty standards are, and how being "hot" ought not to be the pinnacle of your life's purpose. I feel like the whole thing is like some beauty standard version of the prisoner's dilemma--people doing something (whatever they can to be hot) to make their individual life better--since pretty people are treated better--while those same actions worsen the lot of the community (particularly women) as a whole--as we experience a sort of "aesthetic inflation" wherein everyone has to do more and more to even be considered "mid."
1000000%
If you read me you probably read her but Jessica DeFino writes about allll of this!
Yes, I subscribe to her substack, too! Her work is brilliant (totally changed how I think about beauty).
You hit the nail on the head. I find the most vocal critics of body positivity to be misogynistic men, and the most ardent supporters to be women of all sorts of phenotypes. Supporting body positivity which I'll define as not conforming to beauty standards is a public virtue signal that makes one seem kind and compassionate to peers while also potentially reducing sexual competition. Particularly if she in private still strives for the .7 hip to waist ratio and smooth skin.
The reverse- a woman who publicly denounces body positivity, yet privately practices it isn't a thing it doesn't make sense at all really
I hate this as much as i hate the concept of ‘high value women’!! Honestly i am going to hold onto my SANE boyfriend with both hands because if i have to enter todays dating market (I was only last in the dating marketing in 2018!!) i would go insane. Why can’t we look HUMAN ANYMORE !!!! Obv i know not all men but it’s crazy what is expected of us. What these people (men) gonna do when we’re all old and deflated and less hot ?! Anywho LOVE you writing as ALWAYS
Thank you Isabelle! I have to say, to inject some sanity into the proceedings ... I really don't think these wild opinions represent even most (certainly not all) men/people. Most people are Not Online and are boring and have probably very middle of the road feelings about things and don't expect women to look like aliens. I have to believe! I think it's more that the subset of the culture that IS very loud about this stuff has a way of taking over *online*. IRL, I have had convos where men/women were talking about the most beautiful woman they'd ever seen etc. and she was not alien-like!
I honestly wonder if it’s even men who like this alien look. I dont think so. It seems like a trendy face so maybe it’s the fashion industry perpetuating this ideal?
fashion/entertainment/beauty/cosmetic industries yes
I'm with Kailey. I've never met a man who finds this attractive. They all make fun of it. 🤷🏻♀️🤣
I was going to ask something related: the replies to that tweet, are they from men or women? I'm willing to bet they mostly come from women 🤦🏻♀️🙄
hard to tell from the accounts but wouldn't be surprised. the internalized misogyny runs deep for sure
As a recently divorced person, I can tell you that the dating world today is truly scary. Ooog
When I read that some loser called Margot Robbie “mid” I knew the plot was lost
but, like, that's clearly a cope? We can't be taking these things seriously? Obviously he would piss himself if he accidentally ended up in the same room as her.
Yes. Whatever mentally and emotionally underdeveloped psycho said that is not a serious person.
god help us
She is rather a mid than a super star. I can go out and in 10 minutes I will show you a prettier woman.
Maybe the issue is that people in your country are on average kinda ugly?
One of the best ways to deconstruct one’s own beauty standards, I’ve found, is by learning how to draw. For six years I studied portrait drawing with a Chicago artist, and I was amazed by how hard it was just to see a person clearly. Before we could get any kind of likeness, we’d spend two, 2 1/2 hour sessions in front of a live model and many more hours working up the drawing at home. Slowly but surely, so-called plain people became wondrous before my eyes and something very much like love would emerge.
How to educate the eyes of people in general is, unfortunately, much more difficult, given that some kind of “look” is always being pushed to make a buck.
Coming to this so late but wow, love this comment. I am very moved by it!
Good lord, I’m glad I’m “old” (post menopausal at 58) and can’t be bothered to care about this. I have grey hair and cellulite and *gasp* a sagging jawline. Let’s normalize normal faces.
I'm trying Janet!!! lol
Congratulations on your freedom
Your writing here: “But things are changing. I often watch movies and shows from the 90s and early 2000s and think, “Jesus, people looked … normal.” They weren’t all angles and sucked cheeks and hard edges. I don’t know how else to describe it, they looked realer. Like you could reach out and touch them and feel the warmth of a messy little human instead of the cold contours of a person-like bust in a museum. The former is more beautiful to me at this point in my life, perhaps because I worry it’ll disappear.”
---Yes. Thank you for writing this. This is exactly what I’ve been thinking watching some older movies now. People. Used. To. Look. REAL. And I had no idea how much filler everyone has now. In lips. Oh my god and god knows knows where else.
I feel like I constantly see more and more ways to categorize women based on appearance often being spread by other women, and it makes me think about how much harder it's been getting to be a teen/young girl as the internet has progressed. "girl pretty, boy pretty" "rat pretty, mouse pretty," and now "stereotypically plainly pretty?" I don't think our brains were meant to be this hyperaware about our appearances, ever. Definitely a brain rot moment.
100%
Zeynab Mohamed just wrote about this, and the concept of "high and low visual weight" on TikTok, and I felt about 10,000 years old and also deeply depressed. Like, what? We had to worry about our body weight and now our FACE WEIGHT?
facevaluenewsletter.substack.com/p/how-to-be-prettier-according-to-tiktok
thanks for the rec! it definitely is a great read following this post -- the stats about cosmetic surgery and instagram worsening teen girls' mental health are both alarming and unsurprising. i noticed these effects on my mental health even with just snapchat filters when i was younger, but i feel like the detrimental effects are exponentially spiraling and getting worse and worse.
Isn’t that just about contrast? Terrible wording, though. Why not just say high or low contrast coloring?
Great read! Your line "...it would still be another way we’re supposed to be besides whatever we are." is sticking with me. It reminds how impossible and damaging it can be to try and follow any of these ultimately fleeting trends.
Loved that line as well
Thank you both!
No wonder so many young women are going “nope... I’m a boy.” Because none of us can live up to these standards.
I imagine many trans people's motivations/experience is more nuanced and complex than this but I'm not the person to speak to about how much this comes into play
I think so too. But, on the other hand, there is a seeming epidemic of girls just rejecting female-hood... choosing no-gender or boy-gender - or anything besides our current straight-jackets of female-hood, and I cannot help but wonder if it's related.
It’s not. Sincerely ‘one of those’ xox
It's probably a piece of the pie for some even if they won't admit it or it's transphobic to suggest
When I was a teenager (mid 2010s) I did think I was nonbinary for a few years, and it was precisely for this reason. I thought that I didn't "feel feminine" and that it meant that I wasn't a girl. Eventually I realized that I am most certainly a woman, and that everyone in my life who told me that being a girl = feeling feminine had done me a disservice. The reality is that gender norms are ideals, often unachievable ones; this goes for both women and men, although I would say that achieving the ideal of femininity is oppressive to women and typically liberating to men. It seems that in the past decade young people have become preoccupied with "passing" as their own biological sex, and this is deeply unhealthy.
And then why so many men transition to women? This can't be the correct explanation.
Was looking forward to reading this piece when you mentioned it in Notes and it did not disappoint! Instagram face is getting out of hand and even as a 33 year old woman, I still cant help comparing myself at times when I scroll. But if Im being honest, I like my face a whole lot more than these 10 pounds of makeup, plastic highlighted looks that just seem impossible (and uncomfortable!) to achieve. Thanks for writing about this. Its all brain rot for sure
I am consumed with concern about this. Not to mention the money, time and suffering spent on achieving these insane homogenized beauty standards. I see 8 year olds going through their night time skin care routine on til Tok and wonder where the childhoods have gone. Teenagers talking about biotin and twenty somethings talking about retinol. My friends in their late thirties are booking in their facelifts. Deep set eyes are now called “hooded” eyes, and everyone is having eye lifts to get rid of what is such a beautiful and unique feature. (blepharofuckmes.) Everyone is shredding their perfectly healthy skin care barrier. I had to leave LA, because nobody I knew at my age or older had a face that moved anymore and it was freaking me out. I love growing older, and I want to stay in love with growing older, and accepting my growing, strong nose, and my wide face, and my smile lines. I can’t do that in a place where the filter has made its way off line, and intothe supermarkets, at work and even the schools.
Thank you for writing about it so succinctly. I have restacked. x
Thank you, Jameela :)
The utter relief I felt leaving LA and not seeing frozen, tweaked faces everywhere. I'm seeing it more and more in London which makes me so sad-- it's one of the things I loved so much about the UK. But it's still way better: a girl can still pull on wits alone.
Such a great piece! I worry for my 16 year old daughter growing up in this era of impossible beauty standards.
Thanks Tandeka! You might enjoy this piece from Elise Hu on how she talks to her daughters about beauty: theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/05/beauty-privilege-parenting-conversations/674089/
Oh my gosh, the thesis on this (or what I saw as the thesis: "You see girls like her, and girls who are even more striking and glamorous, in your phone every day and it’s rotting your brain") is absolutely perfect. Very little I could think to add to this discussion, other than that: I'm curious if people might interpret Tate McRae's beauty (maybe attractiveness is a better word?) differently if more of them knew that she was a dancer before she was a pop star. To me, the latter identity links beauty to something more static, while the former links it to something more, dare I say, "athletic." Not all pop stars are as physically dynamic, but dance is an inherently physical artform. Maybe the discourse about Tate would be different if people knew more about this side of her artistry. Maybe they do, and I'm just clueless lol.
that's an interesting point!! i wonder if people subconsciously think about what else the person "brings to the table" so to speak, when deeming them "mid". Still sucks to be judged that way though!
Absolutely. Just different strains of sexist and fucked up
Don't worry, the 'mos are doing their part to keep male bodies in line too
Absolutely love this. I'm one of those bronde regular girls (well, woman). I've had men think I'm over the top gorgeous. And I've had some tell me I'm barely a 5 at best. Some people say that what I lack physically I make up for inwardly in drive, accomplishment, etc. I've had others say that success and intelligence don't add to attractiveness (which I think is laughably insane). It really gets down to how you feel about yourself. But the world really does make it hard to see the best parts of ourselves when we look in the mirror.
Thank you!
I love what Jessica DeFino said here, when I interviewed her:
https://bodytype.substack.com/p/on-celebrity-cosmetic-transparency
"I think being a person on the internet has helped me divest from compliments as a confidence booster, because it’s usually one of two reactions: People who don’t like the writing will say, 1.) “You can’t talk about beauty culture because you have pretty privilege,” or, 2). “I’m not going to listen to anything about beauty from somebody who looks like you,” suggesting I’m ugly. That has strangely helped me—it’s all fucking perception, it’s not real, what I look like is not part of the value that I bring to the table."
It's all fucking perception! It's not real!
This is so true!
"If she is plain, I am Angelica Huston in "The Witches" after she takes her face off,' LMAO
Some days it be like that lol
I have 2 tween/teen girls, so this sort of commentary about plainness bothers me, as does what qualifies as beauty (filled/plastic surgery/ ai enhanced). I also see the young girls rejecting what seems to have been embraced by young millennials/older gen z. They find fakeness gross, but I am not yet assured they can reject the push to become consumers of beauty culture. I have loads of hope, because I see my kids throwing aside screentime for in person interaction and real life. They want to make things.
this is really interesting, that they find fakeness gross but that doesn't extend to beauty culture. never thought about it that way. I'm glad your kids are into IRL things, I hope that continues!