Zine On Beauty - Esha Chekuri

zine on beauty

Some believe that Raphael’s La Fornarina embodies belle donna themes, that she is a representation of idealistic feminine beauty... ...or perhaps she is a witch.

table of contents

Introduction, 01 Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images Of Beauty Are Used Against Women Excerpt, 5 A Guide To Beauty Privilege, 07 Interview With Harriet, 11

Heather Widdows, Perfect Me Excerpt, 13 If I Got Plastic Surgery Would I Be A Sellout?, 15 Interview With Katie, 19

Wendy Chapkis, Beauty Secrets: Beauty and the Politics of Women Excerpt, 21 A Letter To White Feminism, 23 Interview With Kayla, 25

Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick and Other Essays Excerpt, 27 The Adriana Lima To Therapist Complex, 29 Interview With Kristin, 33

Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror Excerpt, 35 Beauty And The World Online, 37 Interview With Kris, 43

bell hooks, Art on My Mind: Visual Politics Excerpt, 45 Conclusion, 47 Glossary, 49 Text and Image Sources, 53 About the Author, 55 Special Thanks, 56

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letter from the editor

I first fell in love with magazines when I was a sophomore in high school. On Friday afternoons I would come home from class (traumatized, because sophomore year was an absolute armpit of a time) and I would watch either 10 Things I Hate About You or The Devil Wears Prada. (At age 15 I had what could only be referred to as an immaculate taste in films.) For a long time I was enamored by the glamourous world of Miranda Priestly and six years later I still haven’t properly forgiven Anne Hathaway for tossing her phone into that fountain and leaving Paris. I hoarded issues of Vogue, Departures Magazine, Vanity Fair, Harper’s Bazaar. I watched documentaries like ‘The First Monday in May,’ ‘The September Issue,’ and ‘In the Editor’s Eye’ repeatedly and Alexa Chung’s ‘Future of Fashion’ British Vogue YouTube series was practically my religion. I desperately wanted to be beautiful and wealthy and shiny, to really live in the glossy pages of these publications instead of just gazing longingly at them from the other side of a glass window.

It took a while before reality hit me and I realized that all of those things aren’t real. That they aren’t good. That I could strive for more, be fulfilled by something different. That if the Anna Wintours of the world had their way media would continue to be graced only by thin, rich, white people. So I pulled a 180. I stopped renewing my subscriptions, stopped consuming the media of these publications online, especially on social media platforms. It takes a long time to unlearn these kinds of things, especially when you’re the ideal young and impressionable target, especially if you love them in a twisted unhealthy way that’s actually more akin to yearning than it ever was love. It’s made infinitely harder when it seems that everyone else is still bewitched by the illusion, mesmerized by the algorithms of toxic social media apps, hungry for validation and convinced that there’s only one way to get it.

I’ve created this project in an attempt to disrupt the illusion, to show something new, to reveal some truth. The whole thing is a little bizarre: 14 billion years ago some atoms rubbed up against each other and now I’m sitting here, writing all of this stuff, trying to figure out how to reverse my dysmorphia, my anxiety, my negative patterns of thought.

I’ve tried my best to produce something that would have made things make sense when I was younger and more impressionable, when I was sixteen and confused, and later when I was 21 and I hadn’t quite figured out how to say everything that I was feeling.

It’s really important to me that we all can reclaim our agency. That we know that we are not here for anyone else to control, define, or criticize. I’m not fully there yet myself but I am, and this has to count for something, determined to lessen than grip.

I’ve thrown my phone in the fountain and now I’m ready to leave Paris.

You’ve got to start these things while you’re still young and your brain is still plastic.

Time is of the essence! Stop wasting it here! Turn the page.

Esha (and I’m sorry if it’s bad, DJ and Elizabeth made me do it)

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introduction This is a project about female beauty and how it has been melded into a tool of oppression by the patriarchy.

I, through my life experiences with women of varying contexts, have learned that despite our differences, the infinite paths through which we’ve diverged, we have all at some point craved a beauty that wasn’t ours. We’ve all wanted to be wanted, and as a result of that, took an active role in our commodification. It’s sad to see that rarely anyone escapes this, even those who seemingly “know better,” and it’s disheartening to see others carry this weight in their souls and in their bodies, like a cancer, far past the point of return.

I am 21 years old, making my way forward at what seems

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to be an increasing speed, attempting the unlikely, trying to un-think a thought, the thought, the only one I seemed to have: that I wanted to be the muse. When would I be the muse? What did I need to do to be her?

So these ancient systems of power beckon to me (mere minutes after force feeding me insecurity) with a set of tools to make things better, a menu of solutions that I once thought would make me whole.

Beauty is the answer.

Beauty is a tricky thing, incorporeal, it makes people feel a certain way blah blah. I won’t attempt to define it in all of its abstraction.

That’s not what this is. We already know what their beauty is anyways. Here we only really deal with beauty as it pertains to people and their systems of power. As Tressie McMillan Cottom writes, “beauty is a wonderful form of capital in a world that organizes everything around gender and then requires a performance of gender that makes some of its members more equal than others. Beauty would not be such a useful distinction were it not for the economic and political conditions” (2018).

It is in our interest to realize what they (the patriarchy, misogynists, the assholes running advertising agencies, the beauty and fashion industries, influencers, tech giants, white feminists, the list goes on) have done: the planting of a seed, a thought, a virus, that grows into something much worse, something that we think defines us, something that we can’t seem to recognize as alien. A thought cannot be unthought. This thought cannot be forgotten.

Seeds sown over decades to serve the interests of misogyny and capitalism. Seeds that became a forest.

Increasing modes of technology and new media throughout the past decade specifically have allowed for an even broader and faster dissemination of beauty expectations.

Researcher Mary Jackman has argued that patriarchies define arbitrary beauty standards in an effort to reinforce male privilege by creating systems of power that reward conventionally attractive women with higher social status and greater resources (therefore marriageability).

“These rewards motivate women to internalize the desire to strive for beauty, for themselves and loved ones (e.g., mothers enforcing beauty standards for daughters), even when beauty practices threaten

Is the desire for beauty not all consuming, a looming stress in the back of our minds? Does it not greatly influence how we spend our money, thus controlling our power? Does it not encourage us to be judgmental of ourselves and other women, making us complicit in our own oppression? Does it not teach young girls that it is the way they look, not their accomplishments or moral virtues, that warrant praise? Does it not make us crave the validation of men? Does it not occupy our interests in place of something greater, and more fulfilling?

Feminist theorist and author Naomi Wolf observed this phenomenon in the 90s and called it “the beauty myth.” For her it’s the idea that the propagation of mass media embedded with commercial influences has pressured women to adhere to increasingly rigid standards of beauty as they reach higher levels of social prominence. Commercial media is an extremely important part of the equation, especially when we consider how the internet has shaped our society- our behaviors, perspectives, values,

This system results in the formation of the Prescriptive Beauty Norm or PBN, through which society demands the extensive and intensive perusal of beauty by women. The PBN has historically enabled harassment discrimination against women in social, professional, and religious settings. This is especially true for women of color who are subject to an entirely different, far more restrictive set of standards than white people, a set of standards which plainly imply that BIPOC bodies are a violation.

represent a contemporary backlash against their progress, replacing traditional or fixed ideologies surrounding gender roles that perpetuate the subordination of women. For instance, a 2017 study which asked participants to name the traits or characteristics that society values most in women consistently received “physical attractiveness” as a main response (Parker et. al.). The beauty myth and PBN creates a sort of positive feedback loop that a) tells women how they should look, and b) tells everyone else that they should care about how women look.

A number of feminist social critics have posited that increasingly strenuous standards of beauty held against women

The more time and money women spend on their appearance, the more beauty becomes a trait associated with and

health and well-being” (Jackman, 1994).

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expected of womanhood. The more women believe beauty is expected of them, the more money and time (money) that they spend on it. In order to combat this, we need to be engaging in a “significant interrogation of consumerism, of women’s addiction to materialism, and of the issue of money, both its distribution along gendered lines and its use” (Hooks, 1996). Getting past their demands means challenging that which we’ve been taught is important- questioning the way we spend our money, the things we prioritize, and if they’re conducive to liberation.

There’s a tension that exists between the social pressure placed on women to pursue beauty and the condemnation of such pursuit as being selfish and vain. In her book The Beauty Bias: The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law author Deborah Rhode explains how this “damned if you do damned if you don’t” ideology masks the prevalence and overall effect of the PBN by trivializing beauty practices despite the social emphasis and resources placed in them- i.e. the billions of dollars spent on beauty and fashion advertising each year (2010). Society perpetuates the illusion that women have a choice concerning the pursuit of beauty which makes demands about the way they look seem innocuous. All the while the PBN creates a psychologically coercive reward system in which rewards are unsurprisingly dependent on a level of conventional beauty that is acutely unattainable for most people.

So what does it actually take to be Beautiful with a capital B? Whiteness, or proximity to whiteness, is one of the first things that comes to mind. Yes, the cyborgian-esquenearly-Black-but-still-racially-ambiguousInstagram-model-Kylie-Jenner-face has taken off on the internet, and yes, there will always be exceptions, but their beauty will never not be whiteness. Tressie McMillan Cottom (2018) wrote: There was something powerful about

blondness, thinness, flatness, and gaps between thighs. And that power was the context against which all others defined themselves. That was beauty. And while few young women in high school could say they felt like they lived up to beauty, only the non-white girls could never be beautiful. That is because beauty isn’t actually what you look like; beauty is the preferences that reproduce the existing social order…Beauty, in a meme or in the beauty myth, only holds as a meaningful cultural artifact through which we can examine politics, economics, and laws, and identity if we all share the assumption that beauty is precisely because it excludes nonwhite women.

Just as women are given the illusion of choice when it comes to unattainable beauty standards, most people’s beauty preferences have little to do with what they actually like and more to do with what they’ve been conditioned to think is attractive. The idea that ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ in the context of the beauty myth and PBN feels to me like blatant misinformation. Time after time, many of us fail to realize that this omniscient beholder has been brainwashed! That their perception of beauty has been colonized!

“Beauty can never be about preference,” writes Cottom, “‘I just like what I like’ is always a capitalist lie”(2018). It is undeniable that a direct association between beauty and whiteness exists in most minds and by the time you’ve matured enough to challenge this connection so much damage has already been done. Thus begins the strenuous process of unlearning just about everything you’ve ever been taught about their beauty most of which is rooted in racism, sexism, colorism, fatphobia, ableism, and classism.

It’s rare to see popular models, influencers, or actresses, white or otherwise, that don’t have classic Eurocentric features: small, slender, slightly upturned noses, high, prominent cheekbones, and a set of full, pouty lips. Alternative representation is far

and few between, and when it does occur it’s often accompanied by some element of fetishization or appropriation. Hair is supposed to be long, glossy, and straight.

No texture, kinks, or curls. Extra points if it’s blonde. Bodies are supposed to be void of fat and simultaneously possess ample curves. Women are expected to have “no waist but large hips, to be full-figured but thin, to have no breasts but lower body curves, to have sizable breasts and muscle, but no body fat” (Calogero et al., 2013).

I suppose this is the patriarchy’s way of keeping us on our toes, always striving for the impossible. Acne, scarring, hair, cellulite, stretch marks, lumps, bumps, any indication that you’re not eight years old anymore, should be hidden or treated. If our bodies can’t naturally adhere to the rules we are bullied into changing and then shamed for doing so. We’re expected to live in a cycle of burning, ripping, peeling, cutting, pulling, running, bleeding. Many welcome the pain because, to them, no treatment or procedure could possibly hurt as much as the prospect of being perceived as unbeautiful.

Our beliefs about our bodies and our beliefs about beauty are not ours. Uncovering our truth means challenging dominant hegemonic notions of what beauty is- only then will it be possible to snuff out the industries that have threatened the health and wellbeing of women for decades.

Beauty does not just operate in the world of esteem and petty insecurity and it should not be trivialized in discussions concerning privilege and intersectionality. The effects of beauty seem small when considering the likes of race or gender privilege, but it’s important to remember that the propagation of their standards contributes to the perpetuation of racism, colorism, classism, and ableism in addition to sexism.

The more we talk, ask questions, reject what is harmful to us, forego the tempting but ultimately demoralizing rewards that come with following their standards, the more we get to exercise agency over our beauty, a beauty that is all encompassing.

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Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women

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“So the fictions simply transformed themselves once more: Since the women’s movement had successfully taken apart most other necessary fictions of femininity, all the work of social control once spread out over the whole network of these fictions had to be reassigned to the only strand left intact, which action consequently strengthened it a hundredfold. This reimposed onto liberated women’s faces and bodies all the limitations, taboos, and punishments of repressive laws, religious injunctions and reproductive enslavement that no longer carried sufficient force. Inexhaustible but ephemeral beauty work took over from inexhaustible but ephemeral housework. As the economy, law, religion, sexual more, education, and culture were forcibly opened up to include women more fairly, a private reality colonized female consciousness.

By using ideas about “beauty,” it reconstructed an alternative female world with its own laws, economy, religion, sexuality, education, and culture, each element as repressive as any that had gone before.”

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DO HOT PEOPLE HAVE IT BETTER?: Statistically speaking, yes- the hot people do really have it better. A meta-analysis of over 900 studies on the effects of physical attractiveness found that more attractive people enjoy much more favorable treatment than their less attractive counterparts (Langlois et al., 2000). It’s no surprise that further research has shown that we frequently ascribe a number of arbitrary positive qualities to the attractive people we encounter, perceiving them as being more intelligent and as having better social skills than their ‘less-attractive’ counterparts (Gladstone & O’Connor, 2018). This positive stereotyping is often referred to as ‘pretty privilege’ or the halo effect.

Alright then.

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Musings and other stuff: I sometimes worry that I wouldn’t be such a feminist if I had bigger tits: a line from Fleabag, one of my favorite TV shows. It’s a little startling when you first hear it, and in my experience most people laugh for a few seconds before they catch on and the truth behind the statement rears its ugly head. I’ve spent quite some time trying to decipher the meaning of this line (and the further implications of beauty privilege) and this is what I’ve come up with.

Feminism in this context, in its aim to assert that individual worth shouldn’t be evaluated on the basis of conventional beauty, is an option for those deemed “worthy.” I don’t believe that all conventionally attractive or

“beautiful” women are raging misogynists, but I am very much concerned with and engrossed by the power that lies within this choice and how it affects our behavior, our perception of others, and the relationships that we have with ourselves.

We learn at a young age to associate beauty with goodness. Tulips of the perfect not-quite-red-but-not-orange-either shade, a sparkling ocean that stretches out for miles, the smell of the first day of summer, the taste of nectarines, two jazz bands playing at the opposite ends of a park, a sun that sets at 7:30, twinkling lights in the city that are relentless and hopeful, ice cream at the bottom of the cone, the smooth leathery skin of grandmother’s palm, a breeze floating gently through your

A GUIDE TO BEAUTY PRIVILEGE window. What’s not to love? Here beauty is easy and goodness is easy. It comes naturally, and we understand it as such. But people? Could this goodness be assumed of us? Surely there was a time when we fit on the list, when beauty meant wide smiles and crooked teeth, overgrown eyebrows, a laugh with dimples, full figures. Goodness applied here, and rightfully so…but then what was our Beauty became something tangible, something to be bought and sought after, something that could only be had by few, something that required careful curation. What was mine and what was ours became theirs, but for some reason we never could stop seeing it as good.

When you are conventionally, even objectively, beautiful- the Naomi Campbells,

Kate Mosses, and Christy Turlingtonsyou are accepted by the patriarchy and validated by the people around you. The more conventionally attractive you are, the more social validation you will receive. The opposite exists. The less attractive you are the less social validation you will receive… and the more you’ll be expected to change.

I’ve personally felt this way for a long timethat I needed to be better, to be thinner, to style my hair a certain way, to wear makeup to hide my imperfections, to dress myself through the lens of an objectification that I embraced. Feminism (people fear the ‘f’ word like nothing else), and womanism more specifically, taught me otherwise.

They’ve helped me understand why I’ve felt so negatively about myself for so long and why I shouldn’t. They’ve helped me

think critically about my environment and unlearn so many bad habits rooted in internalized misogyny. When the patriarchy didn’t accept me, I found something else.

Beautiful women, especially beautiful (or plainly conventionally attractive) white women (because there is a difference), don’t need to go looking for answers, for acceptance in this context. This is the choice. This is the privilege. To be critical of patriarchal systems of oppression as they pertain to beauty is an option, an option that I feel is infrequently opted for.

But Why? Beauty is an insurance system for the beautiful. Even when a beautiful person has nothing, they have beauty, a beauty that

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can be capitalized upon. Social currency, literal currency, whatever.

Wouldn’t it be nice to be paid for looking nice? To even parlay the genetics you won in a lottery into trips around the world? Into time? To make the patriarchy work for YOU? Is that selfish? Maybe. But why worry about being selfish when you can roll around in cash and compliments and not-charged-to-your-creditcard-cranberry-vodkas? Do I blame them for opting for the advantage?

Not really. Our desire to be adored, to be wanted, did not arise in a vacuum.

We are all equally brainwashed! Why would they reject that which bestows them with this assumed goodness

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(with love, kindness, attention)? To be adored, to be the muse must be such a sweet thing.

This is when you’re supposed to go well isn’t the (late capitalist) system set up to make one never feel absolutely attractive since they must always be wanting more? Yeah.

But insecurity does not magically erase beauty privilege. In my case, I’m not always a fan of my nose, lips, the scarring and hyperpigmentation from this insane bout of acne I had during my first ever college finals season, my stretch marks, cellulite, the fat that accumulates on the sides of my thighs no matter how profusely I

exercise, the list continues. Still, there are ways that I meet the standard.

I like to think that there exists a sort of beauty intersectionality- our facial features, hair color and texture, height, skin tone, body shape, etc., etc., etc., all come together to form unique experiences of beauty and beauty privilege. For instance, I’m 5’2 and weigh 105 pounds. When people look at me they see someone who is conventionally thin and I know that if I was 30 or 40 pounds heavier I would be treated differently than I am now. The point is: almost everyone that isn’t a literal model has beauty standards that they meet and some that they don’t. Some meet more and

THE WORSHIP OF VENUS some meet less. This experience is different for everyone. So yes, many of us will never feel absolutely attractive, but that doesn’t mean that the aspects of ourselves which afford beauty privilege do not positively impact the way we are perceived and treated by others. Insecurity is not the same as having a marginalized body.

I am, to put it very plainly, in the middle.

Not exceedingly beautiful by their standards, nor terribly ugly. This is not a cry for pity, nor am I fishing for compliments or the compulsory you’re so pretty though! which, at this point, just feels a little patronizing. Like most people I have my good days and

my bad days. It’s fine. I’m just sick and tired of hearing the whole “The way you look doesn’t matter as much as you think! The way people perceive you has nothing to do with the way you lookl!” spiel from conventionally attractive people. I suppose it’s nice of them to try and…empathize?... understand? but they’ve never had to experience the subject of their advice.

If I was ever jealous of the hot people it was because they are loved. The perfect face, the perfect body, it was all only ever a means to be seen.

Don’t you think that in the end..maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention.

Well, to hell with the hot people. I suppose we could neutralize beauty privilege by collectively ensuring that everyone is made to feel like crap all the time. That’s far more realistic than any world where everyone has the advantages of beauty privilege instead because advantages don’t exist if everyone is allowed to have them. But it would be so nice wouldn’t it? Could we try to hack the patriarchy’s reward system? Maybe. In time something else would just take its place. For now I just ask that I stop being ignored. I would like some acknowledgement, I’d like to be given the time of day so to speak. The light needn’t only shine on beautiful people.

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A GUIDE TO BEAUTY PRIVILEGE

INTERVIEW WITH HARRIET Esha: Is there anything that comes to mind after reading the article or when you generally think about beauty privilege?

Harriet: So for context, I grew up as a chubby kid. I was always a bit overweight. By the end of my senior year of high school I was pushing 200 pounds. I wasn’t…I didn’t feel healthy. When I got to college I think I lost like 40 pounds. I lost a lot my freshman year and by junior year I want to say I lost about 70 pounds…and not necessarily in the healthiest way.

When I grew up and I was chubby people would be very surprised when I would be into sports. I noticed that in school dances and stuff I’d always get like picked last or I’d get picked last for teams.I remember so distinctly when I was eight or nine, this girl made fun of me at the playground because I had quote unquote boobs because I was chubby. They were like little fat kid boobs. And they were kind of cute! But I got made fun of for that. I don’t really remember that much bullying, but I do remember that and just feeling pretty insecure for most of my life because I never looked like any of the models that I saw or even the people that were considered pretty at school.

As a result of that I always tried to be the funny fat kid. It’s like this stereotype and it’s the only good thing that you can do with yourself if you’re not conventionally attractive. It’s almost like you have social capital if you can make people enjoy themselves and feel good even if you can’t make yourself feel good, if that makes sense.

Esha: Yeah definitely.

Harriet: Yeah, and so when I lost 70 pounds, people definitely started treating me differently. My family would say, oh my gosh, you look amazing, even though I didn’t lose it in the healthiest way. It was always this contradiction in my mind that even though I knew that people thought I looked quote unquote better. I felt validated but at the same time I knew that it was all very superficial. I’ve also noticed that since I’ve lost weight I occasionally get more attention from men and just like more people attracted to me in general.

Esha: Hmm. Yeah. That all makes sense. I feel like the comments, especially from family members, can be weird. I wish we could just greet each other with no comments about bodies, period. It’s like, why have you been watching me? It makes me uncomfortable that people are perceiving my body in that way and monitoring how I’ve changed, especially my family.

Harriet: Oh I just remembered the point that I wanted to take was like, when I lost weight as well, I think I expected it to fix all my problems because I would suddenly be in the beauty

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standard. I didn’t really have expectations for my body, but I just thought that everything would be fixed because I was suddenly thinner. And then I realized that when I lost weight, your body kind of stays in proportion to itself. You don’t just get like abs and like perfect boobs and a perfect bum. Especially if you lose weight without exercising…you just become a deflated version of your old self. And so…there was a lot of dealing with unexpected stuff, like loose skin and my boobs shrank like two sizes so now they’re just deflated.

Once I lost weight I still wasn’t in the beauty standard. That definitely hit me harder than I thought it would because then I was like, oh, like, there’s nothing that I can really do to attain whatever those people have by eating two almonds a day and exercising for 12 hours straight.

Esha: I think that when I was younger I thought if I could figure out how to work out and stuff my body would start looking like the ideal that we all see online, and that all of my problems would magically be solved. Not only have I realized that my problems will not be solved if that happens, but I’ve also slowly come to terms with the fact that no matter how hard I quote unquote take care of myself, like genetically it’s not possible for me to look like them.

Harriet: Yeah. And that has taken so much weight off my shoulders. When you first realize that it seems like this horrible thing, because you’re like, fuck, like I’m never going to be like these beautiful people and then you realize, well, if there’s no way of achieving it, then I might as well work with what I have and actively reject those standards even though they are still very much what drives the social economy. It does feel liberating to realize you’re free from that in a way.

It’s nice to know that like, in a way there’s no way that I can fully play into the patriarchy’s expectations so maybe they’ll leave me alone. Well, I mean, some guys will cat call or harass anything that moves like, but I mean, I feel like it’s knowing that, like, you’re never gonna be able to make the patriarchy fully work for you. It forces you to find another way to like, exist and appreciate yourself.

Esha: Yeah…when I was writing the article I was complaining and going, “hot people have it way better and no one pays attention to me blah blah” but at the end of the day, I think what it’s really about is…were you that person that was constantly validated or were you the person that was alternative in some manner and had to go looking for something else to draw people in and make yourself conscious of beauty standards in an effort to understand why you were treated differently? Because I definitely feel like I know people that are very conventionally attractive that like, obviously are not misogynists, but will never understand this perspective.

Harriet: Yeah. And honestly, I think that they do have more, as you said, more attention at the end of the day, they’re more loved, but I think the more people that kind of…not to like sound corny or anything, but like the more people that start to appreciate the way that you can feel loved and have social currency that isn’t contingent upon the patriarchy and isn’t dependent on beauty standards the better off you are. Like good for us, maybe one day the hot people won’t have it best because they’ll realize we’re having an even better time than they are.

Esha: I think I’ve realized that if I was like them, then I wouldn’t be, I wouldn’t be the same person. In order to achieve this amazing personality that I have, you have to be like medium, ugly at best.

That’s the sacrifice.

Harriet: I feel like I’ll always…I know I’ll always be jealous of them. That’s true. But they can be jealous of me too. That’s cool. I’m well happy with that.

Esha: Exactly!!! Okay, I’m going to read this passage from “The Girl Who Went to Japan” by Eve Babitz that you sent me. “but beautiful-looking people, girls especially, act like ‘oh, isn’t the world, just the sunniest place,’ skipping the middleman of their own face, which made everyone so much better all along.

Perhaps they skip it out of superstition. And then sometimes they decide to be miserable, like rich people who bewail around saying ‘Money isn’t everything.’ Sometimes they say ‘Just because I’m beautiful, doesn’t mean I’m not miserable,’ which is one way of thickening your life, but it makes your face get lined and then they get really miserable.”

Harriet: It’s because at the end of the day, no matter how much they try to negate beauty or contradict it with other things in their life to make things seem not as sunny as they are when they’re talking to like not beautiful people…It always relates back to that beauty. Beauty is obviously going to be the thing that they prioritize the most, because it’s the thing that gets them the most. They can pretend to be miserable all they want.

Esha: Yeah. I mean, I’m going to, I hate to say it like this might be a little controversial, but when models complain about their jobs…I’m not at all referring to the aspect of the industry where young women are harassed and taken advantage of. It’s more so when they go online and throw pity parties and the white ones specifically are like “this is soooo hard, no one wants to book me… blah blah.” Um??? First of all YOU are the beauty standard and you only want to complain about the industry when it disservices YOU. Ya’ll do nothing when plus size, disabled, BIPOC people in the industry try to advocate for more diversity. It irritates me that they act like it’s their only option for work. And I’m just like…if you hate it so much QUIT. Come work some dumb office job like the rest of us! Come work in a cubicle bitch!

this girl who’s like a model and basically, she had said she had really long, nice blonde hair and she went to get it done and a bunch of it basically got fried off days before New York Fashion Week and she had to cut it all off. She’s made maybe 30 videos about how bad it was and how she thought her agent was going to fire her…

Esha: Couldn’t she just wear extensions Harriet: Yeah and her agent was like, oh, it works. Like you look beautiful. And I was like, of course it looks beautiful. If you have a perfect fucking angel renaissance face with blue eyes and blonde hair, you can get any haircut in the world and you’re going to look good because you’re still the ideal. You’re still white and you still have the quote unquote perfect face.

You’re going to look fine. And the way she kept complaining about it was just…Look, I know it was a bad experience for her, but at the end of the day, if I got my hair cut off could I still walk New York fashion week? No. Esha: Oh yeah. I mean, like, I don’t think it’s any coincidence that my most conventionally attractive friends are ones that have bright pink mullets and baby bangs and stuff. Haircuts that are just wrong but work for them because they’re attractive either way and people will still want to be around them.

Harriet: I, for example, like I was thinking about doing my hair red and people were like no brown is your color. And I was worried that if, you know, I dyed my hair red, I would be even further away from the beauty standard or it wouldn’t look good because I’m not already the beauty standard. And I don’t have that universal beauty that means that you can do anything to yourself and you’ll still be fine. I’m not a blank canvas. On the flip side I guess I could do whatever I want and it could be freeing.

I’m already not the beauty standard so it seems useless to try and hold onto the things that make me look conventional.

The whole blank canvas look is so powerful though, now that I think about it. You can essentially shapeshift and change how you look to suit your environment or the people around you which makes it a lot easier to capitalize off of your beauty.

Esha: Exactly, they have this very valuable asset that can be easily altered to suit different interests and parlayed into money, attention, love, et cetera. Ugh. Well maybe I’ll bleach my eyebrows or something and see if I feel free from the Patriarchy. ....But no one wants to see that.

Well anyways that just kind of spiraled. I’m realizing that I’m not very good at interviewing people LOL. But yes quite an interesting tangent. Okay. Cool. Good talk. Thank you Harriet!

Harriet: I don’t know if you’ve seen this TikTok but there’s

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Heather Widdows, Perfect Me

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“To claim that the beauty ideal functions as a moral ideal is to claim, for those who fall under it, that it is an ethical ideal, that it is defining of their self identity and it colors how they see themselves across domains and irrespective of their success in other domains. It is a value framework according to which they judge themselves and others; it determines their aspirations and goals, and daily habits and activities are ordered around attaining the ideal. For some people it functions as the dominant moral ideal (their most important value framework); for many it functions as part of their value framework (not the most important ideal but still impinging on, and contributing to, their understandings of identity, success, and failure, and shaping some of their habits and practices); and some may even reject it, although, as I will argue in the next chapter, as the beauty ideal becomes more dominant rejection is more difficult. An important feature of recognizing that the beauty ideal is an ethical ideal is its shared nature. We not only judge ourselves “good” and “bad” according to the beauty ideal; we also judge others and do so collectively.”

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If I Got Plastic Surgery Would I Be...

... A Sellout?

Short Answer: No Long Answer: The good of the individual versus the good of the group. Not-Easily-Resolved-Conflict situated within the moral nuance of society’s impossible-to-control-let-alone-stop obsession with cosmetic surgery. Tricky. ’ll start by defining cosmetic surgery as encompassing both cosmetic plastic surgery and non-surgical cosmetic procedures. Botox, Brazilian butt lift, buccal fat removal, the works. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgery, Americans spent 6 billion dollars on surgery and other cosmetic procedures in 2019. Don’t be surprised by this statistic. Researchers have posited that the popularization of cosmetic procedures is linked to restrictive and unachievable standards of beauty, which now exist within the context of our highly digital, and thus visual, society. Considering the increasing prominence of social media and influencer culture where visions of manufactured beauty are abundant, it’s no surprise that women and femme presenting individuals have turned to cosmetic surgery to provide some welcome relief from the immense pressure to be beautiful.

There are many people that argue in favor of the normalization and increasing accessibility of cosmetic surgery. Choice feminists, who believe that feminist liberation is about women having the power to make whichever choices they want, see cosmetic surgery as an opportunity for agency and bodily autonomy. Yes, cosmetic surgery has given women and femme presenting individuals the ability to take control of their appearance and meet the unattainable standards placed upon them by society, but the choice to undergo cosmetic surgery does not exist within a vacuum, nor is it without its consequences. Unfortunately, the pain doesn’t just go away when bandages come off and swelling goes down. After all of the decision making, years of grappling with insecurity, risky procedures and uncomfortable healing processes, there exists the cosmetic surgery paradox.

Researchers Sarah Bonell, Fiona Kate Barlow, and Scott Griffiths define the cosmetic surgery paradox as “the phenomenon by

which modern women are both encouraged to undergo cosmetic surgery and condemned for doing so” (2021). The stench of misogyny is pungent here and it’s typical of the patriarchy to ensure that all things concerning female beauty exist in some form of contradiction. According to Kathy Davis, author of Reshaping the Female Body: The Dilemma of Cosmetic Surgery, feminist scholars have argued that women are “compelled to conform with standards of feminine beauty which are not only impossible to meet, but have to be met, paradoxically, ‘naturally’ – that is, without effort or artifice” (2013). The patriarchy demands that women cater to standards of conventional beauty, presents us with an impossible ideal, profits off our insecurities, and then shames us for trying to change. Only that which is natural should be revered and upheld because in the eyes of the patriarchy beauty must be effortless. A beauty that requires time, money, energy, and work is a beauty that is invalid.

Over time beauty paradoxes have pushed women to internalize the misogyny that places emphasis on beauty in the first place, resulting in a very twisted perception of how cosmetic surgery exists within the greater context of liberation. Some women feel empowered by cosmetic surgery because it gives them a sense of agency in how they are perceived by others. There are very popular strains of mainstream “feminism” (if you could even call it that) which teach us that self-objectification is progressive, that we do it on our own terms. This is only because it’s “profitable”- cosmetic procedures often feel like a guaranteed high-yield project. And hey, there is power in having the choice to change, but this is a belief that focuses solely on the benefit of the individual. What we end up failing to do is question why we want to change in the first place. Why getting surgery for ‘ourselves’ really means getting surgery to please the tiny misogynist that is nesting in our heads.

The only reason most cis gendered heterosexual women want

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The Truth: Our freedom is an illusion. to look a certain way is because of the patriarchy, because we’ve been taught to crave male validation by media and commercial influences. Our freedom is an illusion. I don’t hold any animosity towards women who get cosmetic surgery, but I think it’s wrong to push a narrative that having the choice to get surgery means that we are liberated in this context. In other words, I think that we need to be more aware of how our individual actions impact the larger group. While cosmetic surgery may benefit individuals by temporarily improving body image and confidence levels, it’s ultimately harmful to women as a group because it inevitably perpetuates the same unrealistic standards that are pushing us to change in the first place. Is it an individual’s job to worry about the ultimate fate of women’s liberation if they think that getting cosmetic surgery will positively impact their life? I don’t think so….BUT it is imperative that we stop painting a false narrative of empowerment.

To ensure that cosmetic surgery can eventually be destigmatized, transparency from celebrities and influencers on social media is key. Accusations of cosmetic surgery are often met with accusations of jealousy, neither of which are productive…nor is the ideology that social media, magazines, influencer and celebrity culture aren’t responsible for the insecurities of viewers. Making the argument that viewers shouldn’t look to celebrities as the source of their esteem or self-worth is valid, but this doesn’t account for the fact that celebrities and influencers frequently lie about the cosmetic procedures they’ve had and claim their ‘good looks’ are the result of fitness, beauty products, and diet. Arguing that it is the responsibility of the viewer to know when they’re being fed a representation of beauty that is rooted in artifice is ridiculous. Why should blame be placed directly upon social media audiences rather than the manipulative industries that feed people insecurities

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while simultaneously peddling empowerment? When people are transparent about their cosmetic procedures viewers not only have the ability to distance themselves from the expectation to look a certain way but also get to engage in informative discourse that can help them make safer decisions should they be interested in cosmetic surgery for themselves.

So, no. Getting cosmetic surgery would not make me a sellout nor would it make me any less of a feminist. The patriarchy wants us to feel bad about ourselves and then guilts us into thinking that doing something about it is an act of betrayal…to ourselves. Pardon my French…but that is bullshit. Decision making in the context of cosmetic surgery does not exist in a vacuum because we are always being influenced by the patriarchy, by the society around us. Meaning: it’s okay to want to change, to want to be different.

I threaten to get filler, a rhinoplasty, the works, on a weekly basis only to later feel shame for my lapse in judgment, for my inability to stop myself from drowning in these ‘shallow’ urges. As Wendy Chapkis once wrote in Beauty Secrets: Beauty and the Politics of Women, “as a feminist I felt I had ‘no business’ feeling stung by not measuring up” (1986). She describes it so perfectly: the guilt of feeling like you should “know better” and not knowing what to do when that’s not good enough. What I’ve come to learn is that my (our) desires are the products of a flawed environment, not flawed individuals. We just need to be critical and honest with ourselves about why we do what we do, why we want what we want. The optimist in me does think that we can eventually find a more productive way to address issues of body image insecurity while also pushing for liberation from restrictive ideals of beauty…we just need to do it together.

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If I Got Plastic Surgery...

Surgery...

INTERVIEW WITH KATIE Esha: So today I’m interviewing Katie! say hi Katie

Esha: Is there anything else that you’ve ever considered getting outside of that?

Katie: Hi! Katie: No not really Esha: So Kaite…have you ever personally considered getting any cosmetic procedures done? Whether that’s like actual surgery or injectables or anything like that?

Katie: Um, yes I have. Um…one of my eyes is a mono-lid and the other is a double, so I’ve considered getting double eyelid surgery on one.

Esha: Oh, interesting. And do you think the only reason you’ve wanted to get it is because one of your eyes is different or do you think, like East Asian beauty standards surrounding mono-lids have influenced you?

Katie: I think it’s definitely more of a cultural thing for me…my mom was always like, oh, you were born with double eyelids, it’s very natural for you. She was like…it just sounded like she was saying “you’re born with it” or something like that, like I don’t know what happened to one of them or something like that. To this day I use glues to do it for one of them. And I’ve always asked her, oh, would you prefer if I just got the surgery?

And I think that even though she was making those comments she was conflicted.

But yeah I think it definitely is more of a cultural thing for me.

I don’t think I would’ve noticed it if she didn’t bring it up to me constantly.

Esha: Yeah. I’ve noticed this pattern with other people I’ve talked to where moms can often…it’s not even necessarily that they’re picking on you specifically about something, but like…even me growing up, I feel like my mom would constantly comment about her body.

She would never say anything about me necessarily, but just like being conscious of the fact that she was always saying something about it…I feel like she definitely influenced the way I think of my own body, if that makes sense. But yeah. It’s really interesting that our mothers are, I mean….I guess it makes sense.

Katie: East Asian standards are like…I don’t know if there’s any correlation between East Asian Standards and Eurocentric features. There’s definitely influences but I’m not sure if it applies to the double eyelid standard. I think I’ve seen a video about how East Asians like double eyelid but it’s not because of Eurocentric standards. I don’t know. I think it’s kinda all mixed up. I don’t really know what the root cause of it all is

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Esha: That’s interesting. I recently…so I got a lip flip recently. I feel like I’ve always been so curious about cosmetic procedures and it was inexpensive…like $150 so I just wanted to try it out. I think when I was younger I was convinced that one day I would get surgery… like a rhinoplasty or something but I don’t think that I would ever do that now.

A lip flip is basically…so they inject a little bit of Botox into your upper lip so that when you talk and stuff your lip stays flipped up if that makes sense? Because the muscles above the lip are paralyzed. I think people who have really gummy smiles so you can see less of their gums and whatnot.

But yeah I don’t look any different. I’ve asked everyone if they’ve noticed and I think like in the first few weeks, when it was kicking in I’d look in the mirror and could tell but know it…It hasn’t made any real difference. I think the mystique of it is sort of gone now, which I think for a lot of people is the big, um, attractor. They’re just like, oh, if I can do this, my life will be so much better and then you do it…and for me at least, I was so excited for a week and then it wore off.…but that’s like with anything you buy I guess What do you think about celebrities who…is there someone you follow on social media for a long time, or a celebrity or an influencer that all of a sudden you like found out that they had gotten surgery and your mind was blown?

Katie: Yes! Oh my god um, Dove Cameron. Oh my God. Esha: I feel like this is the example that everyone brings up.

Katie: Yeah. Because there was this viral tik tok about it, I think, I think that’s the reason. But I saw this one..there’s this Korean plastic surgeon on TikTok who reveals plastic surgery secrets and he looks at before and after photos and says what he thinks they’ve gotten done. I remember seeing Dove Cameron on shows and thinking oh my gosh, she’s so pretty… and I don’t think I thought anything of it…and then I saw the before picture and I was like, oh my God, this is literally a different person. And it’s not even in a bad way at all…I think I just realized with celebrity culture and everything…everyone has gotten stuff done. I don’t think it’s necessarily anything bad, but it’s just like, whoa…I don’t know. It’s not like the stardom or

the magic of it all disappeared, but it was just like…what’s real?

I guess that’s like the big thing.

Esha: I remember seeing her on Disney Channel…I feel like the group of people who recognize what she looked like before is getting smaller and smaller and most of her new audience wouldn’t even know…I would hate for those young people to set expectations for themselves based on that. I obviously know that at the end of the day it’s not my business and celebrities and influencers don’t have to share what they’ve had done, but I…I feel cheated still? And I feel like when they are transparent about it…it like psychologically…removes any burden I felt to look like that too.

Botox and filler she was getting bored of her face Esha: Wait I think I saw this video yesterday…she’s from from New Jersey right Katie: Yes!

Katie: Yeah, I think that makes sense. Being transparent…I guess it’s acknowledging that you contribute to the standard.

Esha: I literally, okay. I saw the video yesterday and I was like, I don’t want to sound so mean, but I watched the video and I just wanted to be like…I hate to tell you this girl but your face looks the same.

She…like she looked great before and after. And she has every right to do what she wants, but I was like…I mean, I guess at the end of the day it only, like, it really only matters what she thinks. And I was just like…you look the same…but she probably doesn’t think that, so, yeah. Good for her, I guess.

Esha: It’s nice to not feel the pressure…and it’s not even that I actually want to look like every influencer I see on Instagram, but I feel like I’m hyper aware that most people would prefer that I did.Do you know anyone that’s gotten cosmetic surgery?

Katie: Yeah. I think when she said that I was like, oh…I guess some people are just like…they just want to switch things up and if they have the money, like they might as well just do it, you know. I thought it was like an interesting way to put it.

Katie: Yeah uh…

Esha: Who do you think needs to quote unquote take accountability for what cosmetic surgery is doing to women as a group? Do you think it’s something that we all need to reject individually; do you think that giving people that responsibility is fair?

Esha: You don’t have to say who it is lol Katie: No it’s okay you don’t know her or anything…there was this one girl, she’s Egyptian so I guess she thought that she had an ethnic nose or whatever, and I remember at school she’d always be like, oh, me and my mom are both getting nose jobs when I’m old enough. And then she left the school and I didn’t think about her for a long time and then years later someone had tagged her in an Instagram post. I was like, oh my gosh, I haven’t seen her in so long. And I looked at the picture and there was a pretty big change. She went from like, having a more traditional quote unquote ethnic nose to having a tiny little button nose. And I was like, oh my God, she really did it.

Esha: Yeah…I know like older people that have gotten like Botox or that type of stuff, but I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone…like at school or anything, but like the thing is that now after like my experience getting the lip flip…I’m just thinking, there’s no way the sororities girls aren’t getting things done.

I guess you expect, you only expect for it to be celebrities and people getting stuff done, and you wouldn’t suspect that that random person you see on the street that has a nice nose or eyes or whatever might have had something done.

Katie: Yeah…I think it’s pretty pervasive if that’s the word…I guess like at USC, maybe like, I think it’s more common than we think we just don’t know for sure.

Esha: Definitely. I mean, cause, why not? If you can afford it, why wouldn’t you make yourself more attractive?

Katie: Yeah. And then there was also…I saw this one girl and TikTok who goes to UCLA and she also talks about getting like

Katie: I liked the part when you were talking about the patriarchy has used it to control women by making us look down at each other for changing…I remember like when I was younger I would judge people and be like oh, why would they get this done? I think I did have like a negative perception of cosmetic surgery. And then as I got older, I was kind of just like, oh, people can do whatever they want with like their body or their face or whatever. But I definitely did have, I think more of like the group view before where I was like, why would you do this?

I don’t know what changed, but I guess maybe as I grew older and stuff I started to understand the individual point of view.

Esha: I think the group perspective can make it easier to judge people. And I feel like growing up is realizing that if someone wants to do something they’re gonna do it. And so I guess my whole point with the article was that y’all can do what you want, but let’s stop pretending that we’re doing it for ourselves. You have to be realistic about letting people do what they want. At the same time, we should also be realistic about why they’re doing it.

Katie: Right, right. I think that’s fair. Yeah. I think it’s something I hadn’t…I guess it’s like a step deeper than what I had thought about the whole like cosmetic and plastic surgery thing. I never thought about it like that before Esha: Cool. Okay. I think that’s it. Thank you. I’ll see you at dinner.

Katie: Byeeee!!

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Wendy Chapkis, Beauty Secrets: Beauty and the Politics of Women

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“We are like foreigners attempting to assimilate into a hostile culture, our bodies continually threatening to betray our difference. Each of us who seeks the rights of citizenship through acceptable femininity shares a secret with all who attempt to pass: my undisguised self is unacceptable, I am not what I seem. To successfully pass is to be momentarily wrapped in the protective cover of conformity. To fail is to experience the vulnerability of the outsider....

Women begin early in life with this sense that we aren’t quite right. During childhood the identification of women as other and less lays the groundwork for all forms of inequality. But appearance is the first, constant commentary. As a woman comes to accept her physical ‘difference’ as evidence of personal failure, she also learns to share society’s belief that hostility is her due. This experience of inadequacy means that no woman is allowed to say or believe ‘I am beautiful.’”

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Dear White Feminism, You are no feminism, and for that I cannot forgive you. Your acid tears flow down pearlescent cheeks and dampen hair of fine golden thread. Your acid tears burn me.

White feminism, you think and speak only of yourself. The implications of a womanhood shielded by whiteness elude you. You are oppressed! You could never be the oppressor!

How dare they accuse you- you are the cure not the disease!

You are wrong.

White feminism, you are a child nurtured by misogyny and racism, coddled by homophobia and classism. You care only for those of your likeness. Any nuance, any variation is a threat to your power, a power that you refuse to acknowledge.

White feminism, from activism you demand palatability: criticism that is packaged with unearned forgiveness and delivered in a respectable tone that reads ‘sorry to bother you.’ Colorful infographics posted on your Instagram story. Activism that expires after 24 hours.

You recognize that people are inclined to listen to you but mistakenly believe that this attention is the result of your goodness, of your charismatic and compelling nature. Incorrect. It is your whiteness that propels you into power. You bask under spotlights of sprawling gold. Your audience listens, waits, pulses fluttering, breath bated. You say nothing. It’s my own fault that your silence surprises me.

From feminism you demand comfort. You sit on your throne, you claim that you fight for equality, togetherness. You lie. Your true allegiance rests with ancient structures of corrupt power, your true allegiance lies with the patriarchy. When others call for help you see their cries as an attack. You wage a defense

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wrapped in excuses and backed by boundless privilege. Your whiteness is a shield that protects you from vows of solidarity, accountability. Your claims to feminism are an illusion, so easily do we fall for your traps, enchanted by the promises of change.

In our stupid world beauty is a social currency and you, white feminism, collect check after check after check. I watch you and I wilt slowly.

Every so often these checks bounce, so to speak, and for a moment your whiteness fails to uplift you.

You fall from the spotlight and into darkness. It is cold where it is dark, and yet you burn. For a moment you mean nothing. You don’t like the feeling, as a matter of fact, so white feminism you do what you do best. You part pretty lips painted red and wax poetic about the oppressive and constrictive nature of beauty, oh how it has hurt you so! You’ve been disenfranchised! You shout for help! Your acid tears oil machines of change. Gears shift, cogs begin to turn. It’s like magic, you possess a very special power. You cash your checks. The machine comes to a grinding halt. My bones crumble under the metal.

White feminism you are an avatar, a symbol, a character created by society to distract us from demanding accountability and change, from seeking true liberation. You climb the corporate ladder, you are independent, you have money, you have everything. You have nothing.

White feminism, in your eyes the meaning of equality is having what men have, a power that is viscous green poison, designed to oppress and shame, to be abused by those who wield it. You crave their power so desperately. You had it all along.

White feminism, I don’t want what they have. I want something better. I deserve something better.

You are white supremacy in a pair of glossy Louboutins. You are an agent of misogyny swathed in post Philo Céline.

White feminism, you are no feminism and for that I cannot forgive you. Your acid tears flow down pearlescent cheeks and dampen hair of fine golden thread. Your acid tears make for a nice afternoon aperitivo.

A Letter To White Feminism

INTERVIEW WITH KAYLA

Esha: Hello, today I’m interviewing Kayla. She read the article!

Kayla: Hellooooo!! I did read the article. I’ve read it before. And then I read it again. Wonderful. It was a slayyy Esha: I feel like I see a lot of white women on social media that talk about beauty and beauty standards, body positivity, cosmetic surgery, fashion, travel, dating, being influencers, et cetera et cetera… and I feel like I’m often…sort of left in awe of fact that they can just be really tone deaf.

Kayla: I mean, I think like for me, if we’re talking about beauty standards in general, it kind of rubs me the wrong way when they approach their stories from a like, oh my gosh, like we had it so hard sort of way, you know what I mean? There was that one podcast we talked about where Emma Chamberlain was talking about not being able to fit a standard growing up because she never felt like feminine enough. And this was like a thin wealthy white woman with blonde hair saying this.

And I was just like, okay…you can totally have personal insecurities and I don’t like disregard that, but to kind of clump yourself into a wider issue of proximity to femininity just feels very far removed to me…Especially when you think about the way that Black women, especially with dark-skin Black women, have experienced being seen as more masculine. And so it just feels very odd to me that she said that she’s faced the epitome of what it means to not fit the beauty standard. I feel like people use beauty standards very loosely, and don’t really look at the ways it has power in relation to race, you know?

Esha: Definitely. There’s a lot of nuance to beauty standards and you can measure up in certain ways and not measure up in other ways. And I think when I see a lot of white women on social media try and talk about it they often completely fail to acknowledge the systemic ways that these standards have been used to otherize BIPOC. It’s just sort of like they only want to criticize the system when it doesn’t benefit them while everyone else has to just live with it all the time. There was a TikTok that went viral a few months ago and this model was talking about how she wasn’t doing well at castings and back when she was like a size zero, it was a lot easier for her.

She was crying and everything, and a ton of people responded to it and she was getting like brand deals too. And I think…I saw a lot of black creators specifically respond to the video and be like…we talk about this all the time. Like for them and other women of color… it’s not just something that we can just decide is an issue one day and then be over with it once we get a bunch of brand deals. And

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obviously white women can experience the hurt, but like it’s never going to be to the same extent in a way. But they often want to talk about it like it is…so it’s disheartening to then see, to then see them get the support that they do when BIPOC are speaking out about it constantly or give up jobs in the industry because they’re so damaging while white women can just go along with everything because for them it’s a non-issue.

Kayla: Yeah. I think I’ve told you this before, it’s this thing that’s bothersome to me because I feel like a lot of like, um…I guess the people within specific communities will use jokes, like inside jokes, to kind of cope with what they deal with or whatever. Like a really common one is like when something weird happens and you’re Black you joke with your friend, like, oh, it’s because we’re Black or like, oh, it’s because they’re racist.

Like, you know what I mean? Where something happens and the joke is the automatic assumption that it’s racially motivated or whatever.

But then like also…there are true undertones. A lot of the time when you’re using the joke, there’s a possibility that it’s true…

And I feel like I’ve interacted with white women that have tried to do that specifically in relation to being a woman…I feel like if a white man does something crazy, the first thing I would think of is not like….oh it’s because I’m a woman. You know what I mean? Like being a woman is not the primary…or only aspect of my identity. So I guess intersectionally, because all these things are a part of who you are you can’t compartmentalize them.

There’s this quote about the whole women’s suffrage movement and it’s about like how it was for white women and black men and just completely excluded Black women. And so to me it just kind of just really emphasizes to me how isolated Black women are, even within their own community. And when I talk about feminism, with you and with you and our other friends, I’m so used to doing it under the lens of like other parts of our identities, whether that’s like race and culture, whatever that is, but it’s always the same conversation. But when I have the same conversation with white women it completely lacks that other perspective.

Esha: It’s almost sort of one dimensional…I mean I guess that depends on their other minority identities like being queer, disabled, etc. but not having race as one of those identities makes a really big difference.

Kayla: Exactly. So just going back to the whole…I guess seeing them trying to like translate a lot of stuff that I feel has been

said in relation to race or and applying it to their primary minority identity which is often sex is really weird...if I run into an issue with a white man in public and the first thing in my head is not going to be like, oh, it’s just because I’m a woman. You know what I mean? Just hearing jokes like that is uncomfortable because why are you trying to translate the context so it’s relatable for you? I feel like it didn’t even really merit that comment to begin with, you know…I just feel like white women want to be in on it so bad and I’m just like…what’s going on??

And so like, I’ve been in a situation before where there was like this white man…and the situation, it wasn’t even anything serious, but after someone was just like, oh, it’s because we’re women lol, like trying to make a joke out of it the same way Black people will make the “it’s because they’re racist” joke.

And I was just like…what?

Esha: If I’m in public and someone is giving me really weird vibes that make me uncomfortable, I’m going to think it’s first because of race and not because I’m a woman. It obviously depends on the situation and I feel like you can tell when…when you feel physically threatened and it’s a gendered thing, but I feel like for me I’ve been in more situations where race comes up first.

And what you said about like, like white women and BIPOC…like they’re not the same, but in my head…I think of them, like I’m wary of them in the same way sometimes. The men of my community are the ones that will ridicule South Asian women for dating white men or participating in white culture…but will then go and applaud each other for…for being in relationships with white women. They’re like actively misogynistic and disgusting towards women of their own race…

Kayla: Oh for sure. In the black community specifically, there’s so many Black men with like racist white women or like ignorant white women. I have seen this, I have witnessed this!!! But then I see men go after like black women for dating white men.

And I’m just like, can you mind your fucking business?

Esha: I think like when…your intersectional identities are often like minority identities…the more likely you are to think of others that you might not be in the same community with…like you’re obviously never going to understand their experiences but there’s a greater critical awareness of how they feel and what they might be going through…and I feel like that definitely encourages empathy…white women can obviously have minority identities, there are queer white women and trans white women, disabled white women, low income white women et cetera…I just feel like when cis het white women talk about doing something that is like, quote unquote rebellious or disrupting the system, it’s only so that they can go further in the system, as opposed to dismantling it all together…and their methods of disruption often like ultimately put other people behind, those other people being like BIPOC, queer people et cetera.

Kayla: Maybe you are the system!!! They claim to care about activism but it’s like…I can’t even, I don’t even look at people’s stories anymore because like, I get so irritated when I see the same infographics. I’m not saying that there’s no intention… like maybe you do want to share information, but I’m like, let’s really think about how effective we’re being Esha: it feels like they’re posting to make themselves feel like they’re helping or like they’re involved…so they don’t feel guilty for not participating in real activism I guess. Two years ago…I feel like people were posting because they felt like they had to and not because they had anything useful to share. That entire summer people would make BLM posts and hide them behind aesthetic pictures.

Kayla: I feel like what people care about the most Is showing other people that they care about activism. I actually did really appreciate it when…I think it was Mia Khalifa who let Black creators use her account to post information and stuff so they could access her platform. I don’t think that that means that no creator should say anything ever but I think that we should stop turning to these random TikTokers to give a speech about social issues that don’t pertain to them. It just all seems very performative. Emma Wastson’s little white border on all of her pictures and the little white border around the Black Lives Matter post. That was the craziest shit I ever saw. Black Out Tuesday was just…I was like what are we all doing…they were all using the black lives matter hashtag and blocked out all of the information that was being posted. I just feel like Instagram as an activism space is like crazy as fuck.

Esha: I feel like we need to stop, like expecting these influencers… like the other day Kylie Jenner posted a black square on her Instagram story and the caption was like praying for Ukraine and then the next slide was like an ad for her new lipstick or something. And I feel like it’s like not only white women…I feel like you see this form of performative activism with a lot of people that grew up in or operate in predominantly white spaces or white communities. And they all sort of use social media to openly express this pseudo engagement with activism. Maybe it’s like the white influence.

Kayla: Yeah, the white influence.

Imagine like, disrupting the system so you can be with the white men…

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Tressie McMillan Cottom, Thick and Other Essays

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“When I say that I am unattractive, concede that I am ugly, the antithesis of beauty, I sound like I am internalizing a white standard of beauty that black women fight hard to rise above. But my truth is quite the opposite.

I love us loving ourselves under the most difficult conditions, but I must also write into my idea of truth and freedom…When I say that I am unattractive or ugly, I am not internalizing the dominant culture’s assessment of me. I am naming what has been done to me. And signaling who did it.

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that ugly is as ugly does. Both are lies. Ugly is everything done to you in the name of beauty. Knowing the difference is part of getting free.”

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the adriana lima to therapist pipeline 29

During my formative years the whole ‘Victoria’s Secret Angel Adriana Lima perfect body and face’ look was the “ideal”.

There is a lot of visual documentation indicative of the dominant hegemonic aesthetics of this era and if my memory serves correctly, I’d say that the Y2K beauty and fashion aesthetic in the U.S. was based in typical euro centricity and extreme thinness. I now know that there was some nuance embedBeing so young during this VS-Angle-Adriana-Lima-perfect-body-and-face era was an absolute nightmare, and this is coming from someone who experienced teenage-dom as Instagram and Instagram models became a thing. Neither time was great, to be honest, but at least now there is some form of alternative representation, albeit small, and hey, these days people get to choose where their body dysmorphia comes from.

Being so young and impressionable in this era I was subject to irreparable brainwashing which has caused me to desire

ded in the standards at the time, some difference that existed in the margins of culture. This “difference” would eventually push its way into the mainstream (basically thinness still, this time repackaged in up to the tit high waisted jeans), but being 8 years old and not yet well versed in the intricacies of image, symbol, hegemony, I learned quickly that the qualities of these Adrianas, Alessandras, and Giseles were to be revered and that they were expected of me.

nothing more than to be a fivefoot ten barbie doll devoid of imperfection. When I was a child I wanted this because I was taught that all women should look like Adrianas, Alessandras, and Giseles and that there was something wrong with those who didn’t. As an “adult” (ha), I know that to be like them is physically impossible and in my context, not healthy or real. Still I manage to beat myself up over my inability to compare, and I know for a fact that others do too. I mean…what does it even take to be like them? To achieve the form that gets to gallivant down the runway? To be what is revered most by almost ev-

eryone in the world? Interviews with Dr. Charles Plasser who has worked with several Angles on their dieting routines have revealed that six weeks before (what was) the Victoria’s Secret annual fashion show Adriana Lima stops eating carbs and fats and does 4 hours of boxing and weightlifting every day.

Nine days before the show she stops consuming all solid foods.

Two days before the show she begins to cut water intake.

Twelve hours before the show she stops eating and drinking all together. This routine would help her lose 9 pounds. This routine is capable of causing permanent digestive and re-

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productive issues. This routine produced a standard that I, and countless other children, were told was the norm.

Adriana Lima didn’t eat for most of the early 2000s and now I have to figure out how to get a therapist.

Unattainable standards of beauty have resulted in a litany of health issues, most of which are staunchly ignored.

I suppose if we openly recognized beauty as being a force capable of so much irreversible damage instead of something that is so intrinsically linked to goodness, we’d be less inclined to value it to the extent that we do now. There are a number of industries that rely entirely on our beauty related insecurities and each directly responsible for manufacturing them in the first place. They feed us this unhealthy, unattainable image of what we, more specifically women, should be and as soon as we start to feel terrible about ourselves they turn around and sell us the solution at a price point. Beauty is a pandemic and the more people that get sick, the more money there is to be made.

From toxic chemicals found in cosmetics (ceruse, arsenic, benzene, petroleum) to the widespread use of unsafe dieting products, there are a number of well documented and well known ‘risks’ that come with the pursuit of beauty. Widespread dieting culture has resulted in cases of anorexia nervosa and bulimia, especially in young models and others that work in close proximity to the fashion and beauty industries. (It’s beyond telling that in these industries, which produce images that are marketed in nearly every form of media, a size 0-2 is standard for women.) Those who are able to meet standards of thinness do so by exercising to the point of overexertion, limiting meals and following restrictive dieting regimes, developing 31

abnormal or bizarre eating habits, and engaging in self-deprecating patterns of thought and behavior.

Pressure to keep up with beauty standards has gone so far as to result in the normalization of cosmetic procedures. These procedures, like any other in the medical field, do come with risks that have resulted in hemorrhages, scarring, nerve damage, permanent disfiguration, cancer, and other autoimmune diseases. Surely I’m not the only one that’s concerned about the increasing popularity of BBLs (Brazilian butt lifts), the most dangerous cosmetic procedure you can get, amongst individuals as young as 16 years old due to the glamorization of these procedures on Tik Tok and Instagram. As mentioned previously, when cosmetic procedures aren’t being glamorized online they’re being lied about by celebrities! Bella Hadid!

You can call me jealous, Bella, but I’m not the one who “miraculously” woke up with Carla Bruni’s face one day.

And Jennifer Lopez! I refuse to believe that your incredible skin and wrinkle free complexion at 52 is the result of an olive oil moisturizing regimen. (JLo is just one in a long list of celebs that has a skin care or makeup line and has happily spewed lies and nonsense on the internet in an effort to push product.)

Issues of physical health go hand in hand with the state of our mental health. Barry Glassner, author of Bodies: Why We Look the Way We Do (and How We Feel about it), has argued that dramatically increased attention to physical health (fitness and diet) has been met with decreasing levels of satisfaction in our bodies (1988).

It doesn’t help that criteria of beauty in western culture are increasingly demanding and women and femme presenting individuals are subject to an unrelenting and agonizing pressure to do something, to alter

their appearance, to spend money, to get surgery, to exercise obsessively, to stop eating, just to meet the expectation. Jane Sprague Jones (Beauty Myths and Realities and Their Impact on Women’s Health) makes the surprising (and unsurprising) point that women themselves have become each other’s critics, a phenomenon that I am willing to bet is the result of internalized misogyny. We keep each other in line, ensuring that we all, conventionally attractive or not, remain anxious about the way we look. The beauty myth beats down mercilessly on our sense of identity and self-esteem. In Gender through the Prism of Difference (2005) Jones writes: “Like members of other oppressed groups of which we may also be part, women internalize cultural stereotypes and expectations, perpetuating them by enforced acceptance and agreement.

For women, this is intensified by the interaction of irrational social responses to physical appearance not only with gender but with other statuses as well—race, class, age, disability, and the like. Continuous questioning of the adequacy of one’s looks drains attention from more worthwhile and confidencebuilding pursuits.”

I often feel like I’m in a sort of self-aware mental prison? I put the bars there and I know that they shouldn’t be there and I can feel myself molding the key to get out, but I haven’t quite figured out the right shape yet. It’s all very frustrating, convincing yourself one way and then another, not knowing what to think in the end. Obviously, I know I want to be free of the beauty standards, to rise above it all, to ditch the dysmorphia, to find acceptance. There’s just a part of me (almost like Stockholm Syndrome) that still clings to the idea that being beautiful in the right way, in their way, is the only way to achieve happiness. And of course, they want me to hold on, so so tightly, because it means that I’ll keep

spending money on Vitamin C Serum and Lip Flips, or start spending more money out of desperation for a love that I’ve been told will always elude me.

But then what happens? What happens when I get the rhinoplasty, and buccal fat removal, achieve a perfect size 2, and I wait for it to come rushing to me, the euphoria, and yes, it’s there for a little bit, but then it’s gone. And I’m stuck, back where I was, and being beautiful was the only way out, but the bars remain.

I think maybe the surgery and the stuff works for some people and they’re happy and they move on. But I think there’s a certain point where you realize that physical change can only take you so far. Some of us will have to do the mental legwork in the end.

My own journey with health and beauty has been long and arduous ( “long and arduous” really means absolute shit show). The Adrianas, Alessandras, and Giseles had me messed up pretty early on, and now I’m stuck in the back and forth, sometimes hopeful, but mostly disappointed in myself.

It took me a long time to realize that I have body dysmorphia (and probably a bunch of other problems). I can’t remember the last time that at least one of my friends didn’t have an eating disorder. We’ve always been so smart, kind, empathetic, funny, happy?, well adjusted, mature, “normal” whatever that means. And we’ve also never been okay. But hey, temporary relief can be achieved. One dose of male validation every six hours to make the pain go away and two doses of compliments from strangers on the internet every night to feel something. Side effects include anxiety and depression.

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the adriana lima to therapist pipeline

INTERVIEW WITH KRISTIN Esha: Well hello Kristin.

buy it for me.

Kristin: HAHAHHAHAHAha Hi Esha

I feel like most of the girls that were popular all danced for some reason, but I played tennis. I guess because of the sport that I played I didn’t have the same body type and like their body types were very similar to what you would watch on TV. I’ve never had abs before. I always had like a little pooch…but all these other girls didn’t have any of that. So that would make me feel really insecure. There’s also all of the Asian and like European beauty standards. They sort of overlap in some ways.

Esha: So I got the idea for this article…have you heard of that whole internet conspiracy about the 9/11 to Ellen DeGeneres cancellation pipeline?

Kristin: No??????

Esha: It’s like 9/11 happened and it inspired some guy to write a really famous song and it inspired parts of Twilight and then someone wrote the Twilight fanfic which turned into 50 Shades which made Dakota Johnson really famous and then she got Ellen canceled. It’s like this idea that when something big happens you can kind of reverse spiral it into something else that just doesn’t make any sense.

But anyways I wanted to ask you about your experiences with beauty growing up. I kind of talk about how when we were little…you don’t see commercials or branding nowadays the way Victoria’s Secret was back then. I feel like it used to be so normal to see a giant poster of a size 0000 bikini model at the mall but it’s different now.

Kristin: I think it’s because beauty standards have shifted over time…so that’s like not really the cool thing anymore, to be a size 000. I mean there are a lot of girls that still want that type of body but I feel like the trendy thing now is to actually be curvier. I think you write about this in one of your articles, being able to have body positivity is more of a thing now but it still comes with its own conventions. It’s like oh you’re a size 4 now instead of a triple 0 and that’s body acceptance.

Esha: Yeah and there’s the whole issue of standards affecting plus sized individuals much more but size 4s and 2s have larger platforms to speak about body positivity on social media. Is there anything specific that you can cite as a sort of source of beauty insecurity growing up? Is there a specific moment when you were younger when you realized oh I don’t like the way I look or this thing makes me feel bad or something like that?

Kristin: Um, well I grew up in a pretty rich, like white city and, and my family at that time was not as wealthy, we were middle-class and all these people that I went to school with my entire life, from kindergarten to senior year, were all like upper class or upper middle class. My family lived comfortably but I couldn’t just go and tell my parents that I wanted something and ask them to

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Esha: Yeah I mean East Asian beauty standards were colonized by white people so they’re often really Eurocentric.

Kristin: Right? They still want someone with a stick body and like the super slim nose and the double eyelid.

My mom would always make me feel conflicted about standards too. I didn’t like my nose for a really, really long time. I thought it was an ugly nose because my mom would always be like, oh, it’s too bad your dad like ruined your nose. Your nose is like too big for your face, if it was just my genetics, then like you would have the perfect nose or something like that. I also tan really fast just because my dad is Hawaiian and she would like point out things like that.

I remember going to the store with her once and she was like, oh you’re a size zero, not a double zero…why?

And I was like, girl, what? What even is double zero?

Invisible? What do you want me to be? So, yeah, I think there are a lot of overlapping things.

I think like maybe like the media is not what impacted me as much as. Or at least like in middle school when things really start to change, it’s not really media that started changing a lot, it was just like what other people around me started looking like and how they dressed… but I think what impacted them was media.

Esha: Yeah, I get that. I mean, I think when I was like in seventh grade, I wasn’t like walking around all day crying about Adriana Lima, but I think subconsciously I knew that… that the most popular white girls at my middle school would always look more like the ideal than I ever could.

There’s this like really profound…Tracy McMillan, cotton wrote this book called Thick and Other Essays and she writes about how she always sort of knew what the Black standard of beauty was but then once she started growing up in more predominantly white spaces, she became aware

of what their standard was. And it was sort of this realization that even…. excuse my language here…. even like the most like unremarkable white girls still have facial features and body that fit the ideal. Does that make sense? Even if like you’re not the “prettiest” white girl out there, you’re still white and you’re still meeting those standards at some level. It was only the BIPOC that had the possibility of not meeting the standard.

like, it’s a nose.

I think I was aware of this subconsciously. I was making this connection between the people I saw day-to-day and people in media and knowing that like, they could be them, but I couldn’t be them. And then growing up with them and watching them turn into those girls that I had always seen on TV or in movies …. I guess I felt that they were heading in one direction and I was going in the opposite. I think it used to hurt me a lot more than it does now…I think I feel more neutral about it if that makes sense.

Kristin: I used to research K-pop diets and exercise regimens and there was this one person IU whose videos I started watching. I looked up her stats and she is literally the tiniest human being ever she’s so she’s tiny.

Kristin: Yeah I mean, like, I think a huge step to selfacceptance of your body is just recognizing that the point of your body is not to look a certain way, but it’s literally appreciating that your body can heal and your body allows you to do things and also understanding…

I’m an able person and not everyone is able to do the things that my body is capable of doing. You know?

I think about this on really bad days when I’m really unhappy with the way things look, it doesn’t always work, but it’s important to acknowledge that know, at the end of the day, your body is doing its job so that you can live a life that you think is fulfilling in the end. And it doesn’t really matter anyways, you’re gonna die and no one’s going to see your body then, you’ll either be ashes or in a coffin.

Esha: Yeah I feel like I sometimes guilt myself into not feeling upset and it’s this weird mechanism that isn’t probably healthy…but you sort of figure it out as you go. It can be frustrating because I feel like I’m so self-aware of all of these issues that I have. Especially since now nearly everybody is talking about beauty on social media and we’re starting to recognize that we all only think this way because we were conditioned to. You can’t really escape it and then it just feels…it just makes you feel worse because you’re like, I know I shouldn’t feel this way, but I do. And that’s the trick, right?

Esha: No, I know what you mean. If someone walked in this room and said something nice about my nose, I would be like why are you lying?? LOL. I have another question. Is there anyone who you see that is like the ideal person you’d want to look like? Like a model, actress, celebrity, singer, someone online, etc.

Esha: Ahh a Skinny Queen.

Kristin: HAHAhhAHHAHHHHAHaHHAhaa I looked up one of her diet videos and for five days she basically will eat one sweet potato for dinner and like an apple for breakfast and like two, like vegetables. She would also run on top of her dance training and practices. I just knew that it would be impossible for me to be like her and meet those standards. It’s also interesting because she’s the celebrity that all the male K pop stars will say is their crush.

Esha: They’re probably all just told to say that. Do you have anything else you want to say?

Kristin: I do not have anything else.

Esha: Thank you for letting me interview you.

Kristin: You’re welcome. Thank you for interviewing me.

Esha: You’re welcome.

Kristin: No that’s fair. I remember when I was younger I really wanted to get a nose job just because my mom would always tell me that my nose was ugly, but I think coming to college you see so many different people and I think something that shocked me is a lot of people have told me that I have a nice nose. I remember the first time someone said that and I was like, that’s not funny. I thought they were lying to me. Or I would be like why would you bring that up? Why would you say that?

It’s something that I was insecure about, but now I’m

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Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror

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“The root of this trouble is the fact that mainstream feminism has had to conform to patriarchy and capitalism to become mainstream in the first place.

Old requirements, instead of being overthrown, are rebranded. Beauty work is labeled “self-care” to make it sound progressive. It sometimes seems that feminism can imagine no more satisfying progress than this current situation—one in which, instead of being counseled by mid-century magazines to spend time and money trying to be more radiant for our husbands, we can now counsel one another to do all the same things but for ourselves. The beauty ideal asks you to understand your physical body as a source of potential and control.

It provides a tangible way to exert power, although this power has so far come at the expense of most others: porn and modeling and Instagram influencing are the only careers in which women regularly out earn men. But the pleasures of beauty work and the advent of mainstream feminism have both, in any case, mostly exacerbated the situation. We have something deeper burrowing now—a lifestyle myth, a paradigm where a woman can muster all the technology, money, and politics available to her to actually try to become that idealized self, and where she can understand relentless self-improvement as natural, mandatory, and feminist—or just, without question, the best way to live.”

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beauty and the world online

Two decades of social media and all we’re left with is an illusion. Authenticity is rare and fleeting. We’re so frequently presented with artifice that even when we’re able to identify what is real or unreal, the effect on our minds is the same. Social media has created extremely unrealistic standards of life, love, wealth, success, fulfillment, happiness - you name it and it’s been faked, twisted into a convoluted, unironically yassified, version of its original self. We see the world as it is reflected by a funhouse mirror. And then we can’t cope with reality.

Instagram models and influencers are notorious, and in my opinion culpable, for spreading illusions and unrealistic standards of beauty online. From photoshop and filters to Facetune, we are taught to strive for a beauty that can only be attained through a level of artifice that is infrequently made apparent. These people are able to take advantage of the fact that beauty is a social currency (and that most social media platforms are comprised of impressionable preteens and creepy men)

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and gain large followings to which they market an array of products for money. I’m talking FitTea, Sugar Bear Hair Gummies, and a bunch of other stuff that they claim helps them look the way that they do.

No filters or cosmetic procedures…..just Gummy Bears. Yeah. The internet has been commandeered by a swarm of these influencer-Instagram-model-people and Kylie-Kapitalist-Nightmare-Jenner of Kylie Cosmetics, Kylie Skin, Kylie Swim, Kylie Baby, sister to Kim of KKW Beauty, KKW Fragrance, and Skims, Kourtney of Poosh, and Kendall of 818 Tequila and performative Pepsi activism, is their leader.

commodification and sexual objectification of black bodies, allowing themselves to partake in the benefits that come with “looking” black. They can turn this charade on and off as they please, obviously opting to embrace their whiteness at any indication that the social implications of actually being black may arise. Black culture, and thus Blackfishing, is abundant across social media platforms. From the viral filters on Instagram to the viral dances on Tiktok, Black creators are ripped off near constantly and are forced to regularly address appropriation and ignorant content.

When the Kardashian-Jenners aren’t slapping their name on every piece of merchandise conceivable, they spend their time Blackfishing- appropriating and ultimately profiting off of black culture by imitating aesthetics, facial features, clothing, and hairstyles that are traditionally and historically black. As frequently seen on social media, white people, white women specifically, have tapped into the

Similarly, the international rise of K-Pop and other Korean media has been cited by many BIPOC creators online as the cause of the growing popularity of “Asian Fishing.”

The term has gained a lot of traction as more and more people look to find a way to describe the appearance of celebrities who have changed something about their look (makeup, cosmetic procedures, photoshop, etc.) and suddenly appear to be of East

Asian descent. (If you’re confused I would recommend google searching “Ariana Grande Asian Fishing” for reference.)

There is also an online discourse surrounding the appeal and draw of Asian Fishing for white people. Centuries of stereotyping and fetishization has resulted in an association between East Asian women and hyper femininity which has led many to believe that, for white people, Asian Fishing is seen more as a gendered performance rather than a racial one, absolving them of accountability.

From what I’ve seen, most online discussions concerning Asian Fishing acknowledge that it copies Black Fishing as a term and concept- though similar, both phenomena carry their own history, set of social implications, and affect Black and East Asian individuals differently.

Some people have opted to use “Asian Baiting” as an alternative. The second problem with the term Asian Fishing is that “Asian” should really be “East

Asian.” Asia is quite a large place, and while the features and culture of west and south Asian individuals can also be appropriated, the term “Asian Fishing” has really only been used to describe the appropriation of East and South East Asian traits and henceforth should be referred to as “East/South East Asian (ESEA) Baiting” to be the most inclusive and correct!

Now, all of the fishing, filler, photoshop, and fox eye makeup trends have everyone confused. I see Black and Middle Eastern women regularly harassed online for, and I quote, “trying way too hard to look like Kylie [Jenner].” What??? I recently saw a TikTok post about the Miss Universe Pageant and how Miss India, Harnazz Sandhu, shouldn’t have won because she possesses typical Eurocentric features.

What??? Yes, we should criticize pageants and the media (yes, all the media, every single one, all of it ever) for championing BIPOC women with lighter skin and more Eurocentric features, but I can assure you

that Sandhu possesses the features of a typical Punjabi girl. Maybe, just maybe, the influencer-instagram-model-people have been getting the procedures and doing the makeup trends and changing themselves to the point where they look racially ambiguous. These people are starting to look like BIPOC, not the other way around. They pick and choose the ideal traits from different ethnic groups, slap them on their white selves, and now we have people claiming that ethnic features that have centuries of history “eurocentric.”

In the end all we’re left with is the cyborgian-esque-Instagram-modelKylie-Jenner-face that I mentioned a few articles ago. Jia Tolentino’s 2019 New Yorker `Decade In Review” piece, The Age of Instagram Face, does a wonderful job of explaining exactly what it means. My main takeaways from the article: 1. There is a correlation between the development of social media in the 2010s

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is she instagram worthy now?

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(think instagram filters -> snapchat filters -> easily accessible photoshopping apps like facetune) and the growing popularity of injectables.

underperforming sectors and remake them, discard whatever doesn’t increase profits and reorient the business toward whatever does.

2. Kim Kardashian is referred to as “patient 0” of “Instagram face.’ There are a number of women that, despite looking quite differently, possess a series of facial traits that “contribute” to their beauty. This suggests that a universal underlying principle to beauty exists and is now frequently being used to reproduce Instagram face. (Kylie Jenner and her hoard of replaceable clones are the perfect example).

Tolentino’s piece is like a lighthouse: it shines out to me, a beacon, an explanation, as I try not to drown in the twisted-cyborgiansexy-baby-tiger-algorithmic-dumpster-fire that is my Instagram explore page.

3. Instagram’s aesthetic language impacts how we perceive ourselves and drives us to present ourselves to others in a very specific way. “The aesthetic is also marked by a familiar human aspiration…toward a generic sameness. Some things just perform well.” That’s what the cyborgianesque-Instagram-model-Kylie-Jennerface is: generic sameness, or as Tolentino writes in regards to shifts in beauty ideals towards ethnic ambiguity, a flattened composite of greatest hits, a beauty ideal that “favors white women capable of manufacturing a look of rootless exoticism.”

A beauty that is derived entirely from the algorithm.

4. All of these cultural phenomena seem to disproportionately impact women. “In 2018, 92% of cosmetic surgery procedures were performed on women.” The social media influencer industry has normalized the idea that the “self” is a commodity which influences women to view themselves as a commodity even more so than we are already taught. There is a piece of the article that I think is worth quoting directly (as opposed to me, butchering it to the point that it loses all meaning): Social media has supercharged the propensity to regard one’s personal identity as a potential source of profit— and, especially for young women, to regard one’s body this way, too…For those born with assets—natural assets, capital assets, or both—it can seem sensible, even automatic, to think of your body the way that a McKinsey consultant would think about a corporation: identify

Speaking of sexy baby tigers, Kate Moss once said that nothing tastes as good as a skinny body feels. (Maybe she’s only ever eaten British Pub food?) Social media is confirming that we never stopped believing her. The internet has started to suspect that the Kardashian-Jenners have been reversing their Brazilian Butt Lifts (BBLs).

Uh oh…what does that mean? Is the skinny body coming back? While I would argue that thinness has and always will be the ideal, there was a period of time in the 2010s where the curvy body, which would later be known as the “Fashion Nova” or “BBL” aesthetic, had a lot of social prominence.

This by no means signified the acceptance of actual “curvy” or plus sized bodies, but rather the acceptance of bodies that possessed ample “womanly curves” with none of the accompanying stomach fat, cellulite, stretch marks, etc. After a decade of this equally unattainable and dangerous standard, there is a suspicion that extreme thinness is coming back for the 2020s and reclaiming any space that had been taken up by the “BBL body.”

I personally can’t help but hope that recent pushes for diverse body campaigns and alternative representation on social media will prevent thinness from having the absolute chokehold it had on us before.

Social media has allowed mid and plus sized individuals to gain platforms and we’re slowly starting to see fashion and beauty campaigns that include individuals that deviate from industry standard sizes (0, 2). Still, mid and plus sized individuals are harassed near constantly online and are told that they are encouraging an unhealthy lifestyle and are “choosing to be fat”. Ironically, when plus size individuals use their platforms to post about their health and fitness journeys they are met with the same reaction. Chronically-onlineinternet-trolls get mad at plus sized people

for being plus sized…but shame them for sharing their journeys mental and physical health. It doesn’t make any sense. Plus sized influencers are not “unhealthy” and many do not need to “lose weight” in the first place. They’re doing what they need to do to take care of themselves and that’s that. Healthy looks different on everyone.

It’s also so important to remember that frequent healthy eating and exercise are not accessible for everyone. People have difficult jobs to work, bills to pay, families to support and look after. Honestly, even if you can afford the nut yogurt, supplements, and barre classes but chose not to make these things a priority in your life, that’s your decision and it’s not the place of an internet troll to say anything about it.

It seems that social media and all the celebrity-influencer-people have brainwashed the masses into believing that there are strict rules that define health and beauty. It’s interesting that no one has anything to say about uber-thin runway models that are constantly reposted online on those stupid it-girl-Pinterest-fashion-life inspiration accounts. Have you seen a Yves Saint Laurent advertisement on Instagram lately? It seems quite clear that beauty standards online have played a role in villainizing plus sized individuals, ultimately resulting in a sort of wide social acceptance that they are the “image of unhealthy” which is far from the truth. In an era of Kardashian obsessed Instagram models, liposuction, and cellulite erasing lasers, the chronicallyonline-internet-gremlins have lost sight of what human bodies really are and what it takes to be magazine cover, and now social media worthy. Celebrities and influencers, the magazine cover worthy people (we have Anna Wintour to blame for that), are rarely transparent about their beauty/ health/fitness regimens. They’ll chronicle their go-to juice cleanses and post a three minute “killer ab workout” on TikTok all the while failing to mention the immense amount of time and money that goes into personal trainers, nutritionists, chefs, dieting regimens, high end beauty and skin care products, and cosmetic procedures.

You’d think that the internet is big enough for there to be spaces for the people who, for whatever reason, don’t live up to the ideal. The body positivity movement used

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unrealistic body standards and promote the acceptance of all bodies, but what started out as a safe space for mid and plus sized individuals became a movement co-opted by conventionally thin people on social media. I don’t mean to sound harsh (yes I do), but the mainstream body positivity movement is really just skinny women reassuring each other that they’re not fat. I do understand that not all conventionally thin people are happy with their bodies- they are often shamed for being too thin and many suffer from eating disorders and body dysmorphia. Still, it seems a little twisted that conventionally thin people now have a greater platform to speak about an issue that does not affect them or to the extent to which it applies to plus sized individuals. It is important to acknowledge that in the context of beauty standards, thinness is a privilege and is one of the reasons that these body-positivityco-opters have a platform in the first place.

TikTok’s @siennamae is a prime example of this and I’d argue that the widespread rejection of her platform and others like it has played a significant role in the mainstream shift from body positivity to body neutrality among social media users. A lot of plus sized individuals, people of color, and disabled individuals have made the switch to body neutrality after body positivity was co-opted and took up a patronizing and ultimately counterproductive tone.

Relentlessly trying to convince yourself that your body is beautiful is tiresome and seems to reinforce a power structure that still holds beauty on a pedestal. I guess the point is that we should be able to exist, to feel that we are worthy of esteem and respect, without having to feel strongly about our bodies one way or another.

Feeling beautiful is great!, but feeling like you always have to feel beautiful, an example and illusion set by a lot of people online, can be damaging in the long term.

Body neutrality can be really helpful for those working through eating disorders or dysmorphia and, as opposed to body positivity, I believe that it will ultimately help dismantle a lot of common behaviors and thought processes that were born as a result of beauty oppression.

We the end the discussion of social media with mental health. There was this

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era where all the models on Instagram were posting mirror selfies with the ‘social media is bad for your mental health’ iPhone cases. I still don’t understand what that was. Were they trying to be funny? Selfaware? The internet is an ironic and fatally ill place. I do believe it, that social media is bad for your mental health. I don’t take it nearly as seriously as I used to, but Bella Hadid posting seven consecutive crying selfies with the caption “what you see on social media isn’t real” is evidence enough that things haven’t changed very much.

Maybe Bella is onto something or maybe, considering that all I see on social media is her face, the post is a subtle admission of something else.

If posting a picture of yourself featuring a brand new Facetune rhinoplasty for a group of people who probably already know what you look like isn’t a sign of damage sustained, I don’t know what is. We seem to sniff out the lie quite easily when it comes to the people we know and see frequently.

Facetune rhinoplasty, a December spent in Tulum, expensive brunches, the works; but we know what their lives are really like, who they really are. The issue is that social media has us connecting with so many randoms, so many people who we don’t know, that all of a sudden, we can’t sniff out the lie anymore. Influencers are the deadliest of them all. We know that much of the beauty we see online is fake. Your cousin/ex friend/ popular girl from high school that you forgot to unfollow’s Facetune rhinoplasty is all the evidence you’ll ever need. But for some reason Kylie and the Kylie clones make you second guess yourself. For some reason we buy into it so easily. This is the power of the illusion. It has us wishing that we were them, and not us, and so goes the rabbit hole of sadness, disappointment.

A study published in the National Library of Medicine has found direct connections between increased social media usage and poor quality of sleep, increased anxiety and depression, and low self-esteem (Woods, Scott). Social media addiction is rampant- the algorithms behind our beloved Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, etc. have been specifically engineered to create positive feedback loops that encourage us to keep engaging and posting as a source of validation. Illusive portrayals of beauty

have undoubtedly increased issues of body image among all users and have furthered unrealistic standards for women.

We look to social media to tell us who to be, what to look like, what to buy, where to go. When we do what we’re told (and post about it) we get a reward in the form of likes and comments. I say they’re all fake.

No one really likes your pictures. I’m sorry but it had to be said. We’re told that social media is about connecting with others, but really, it’s about the power trip that comes with being able to strictly control and manipulate what many believe is the most important representation of themselves, the representation that most people will end up seeing: a carefully cultivated public image, casual but performed, devoid of imperfection.

Social media is a headache. It wasn’t easy going into the most vulnerable years of my life with it floating around in my subconscious, telling me what to do, feeding me one definition of beauty. Slowly things will turn around. Yes, the Instagraminfluencer-model people will continue to do what they do best, but that doesn’t mean that we have to buy into their bullshit.

The market has become so saturated that hardly anyone wants them anymore.

(By “anyone” I mean people with critical thinking skills). Micro influencing has been overdone and more and more creators seem to dislike the parasocial relationships that come with it. I personally think that Instagram is dying, but all that means is that the illusion has found somewhere better, somewhere more lucrative to propagate its message. It doesn’t matter. As long as people continue to use their platforms to be critical of what they see, to show the alternative, and to share something new, it will be alright. The illusion stands, there are good days and bad days, but it doesn’t have nearly as much power if you make the conscious decision to see through it. So see through it.

(Mona, Frida, and Girl-With-A-Pearl were all facetuned and filtered by yours truly).

is she worthy of your love now?

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Beauty and the World Online INTERVIEW WITH KRIS Esha: Okay. Um, I think it’s recording now. I am freestyling. I’m freestyling this interview with Kris because I did not come up with questions because I forgot.

Kris: I have to get up in four minutes to get my brownies Esha: Okay, that’s fine. We can pause it. Okay. So Kris just read the article. Thoughts?

Kris: I was like, oh, that was good.

Esha: Thank you Kris: I feel like…the stuff that like stood out to me the most is the stuff about how social media aids the commodification of personalities and has transformed how we consume.

And I feel like that’s kind of what it comes down to. It’s really interesting because I feel like early early social media, like a lot of forums and like weird chat rooms don’t really exist anymore and kids don’t really have spaces that are not dedicated to consumption or marketing themselves. Now it’s just like seven-year-olds on TikTok. I don’t know. And that’s just concerning, I guess.

Esha: I’m trying to imagine what it would have been like if…I remember when I was little, I used to play on Pixie Hollow and Build-a-Bearville.

Kris: Yes we’ve talked about this. They were formative.

Esha: Yeah they were so much fun. There were so many different games and people would chat with each other and you could play games with them. I can’t imagine being that age and not having any of that and only having TikTok. There’s no sense of play!!

Kris: There’s no sense of play! And it’s really scary also, because I think you just internalize a lot of what you see online and on platforms like TikTok it wants you to get funneled through the algorithm because the things that will make you interact the most are the things that will shock you or disturb you…especially with children, I feel like they just end up seeking out the most disturbing content. I was interacting with one of my cousins the other day. She’s 13 and she said to me, don’t invest in crypto right now, by the way, it’s a bad market. And I was like, Angelina, what the fuck is wrong with you?

Esha: LOL…when I try to be critical of social media there’s always someone that goes…well…this is how we interact with each other!!

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And I’m just sat there like, I think we all stopped interacting a long time ago and this is all just mindless consumption.

Kris: Yeah. I mean, I feel like what drives it ultimately is like capitalism, because you turn yourself into the product that other people can consume and there are many ways in which you have to optimize yourself to be a good product to sell so people will want to interact with you. People who want to communicate are forced to perform for capitalism and consumption and basically be like, I am now a product and I have to follow the conventions of what’s popular. If you don’t, then you don’t really get that response. Get clout or die.

Esha: Yeah!!! And there was an era of Instagram where you could clearly tell that people were trying really hard to be aesthetic and filter their pictures. Now everyone’s trying really hard, but you have to present the illusion that you’re not trying at all. Every picture is actually carefully curated to paint this narrative that you’re effortlessly desirable.

Kris: It kind of reminds me of the way that beauty has evolved.

The Kardashians are getting their BBLs removed and how we’re going from slim thick Fashion Nova body back into skinny as the trend. It feels like we’re now moving back into minimalism in all aspects, but it’s not as if it’s authentic in any way. It’s in fact even more performative because it’s now instead of, you know, it being okay to wear a foundation and have it look like you’re wearing foundation, your skin has to be perfect… that’s what beauty is. And I think like, it kind of just goes to show the length that we’re willing to go in order to not seem like we’re performing, we’re forced to perform.

Esha: Yeah well there’s the whole naturalistic fallacy, the idea that something is inherently better when it is natural. And so to, to admit that beauty doesn’t come naturally to you is like admitting defeat in a way.

Kris: Yeah especially for women, because women are supposed to be synonymous with beauty. And it’s like, if you’re not beautiful, you’re not a woman. And that’s very scary for a lot of people. And I think also…do you know about the Lovely filter on TikTok? Esha: No Kris: Okay. So there’s this filter on TikTok where basically it doesn’t really change your face at all, it gives you fake eyelashes and a heart shape highlight on your nose, and I saw so many TikTokers praising this filter because they were like,

oh my God, it’s finally a filter that doesn’t change our face. And I was like, I can’t believe it’s so common for people to just have filters that change their appearance completely, so much so that they feel the need now to make at TikTok celebrating things not changing their face. And it’s really scary because before you could sort of tell when people were like filtering their faces but now I think you can’t really tell. Even the default camera itself has like a skin lightening and chin slimming filter and there’s no way to turn it off.

Esha: No, there isn’t. I actually noticed this for the first time the other day. I haven’t really played with any of the TikTok filters but there was some trend going around where some people were using like light brown eyes filter and so I went to go try it…and when you open the filters panel you can kind of tap on the screen to like remove it and the tap back to put it back on, and when I was tapping the screen, like my eye color would change, but even when it was off the filter would still be messing with the size of my nose and lips.

Kris: It’s really scary because nowhere in the description is a disclaimer that says, hey, this changes like all aspects of your face. Like all of those hair color ones where everyone is like oh my god, look at how good I look with this red hair filter and it’s like, well duh. You like it because it also makes your eyes bigger and it makes your skin smoother and makes your nose smaller…I mean, like I have friends who have said that they’re not used to seeing their faces without makeup now because they don’t look like the filter version of themselves and it takes so many selfies that become their perceptions of themselves.

Esha: Oh my God. I mean…when I look at the occasional picture of myself that hasn’t been taken by me…you know when someone takes a photo and you’re in the background…and I look at it and I’m just like who is that????

Kris: It’s really interesting because I noticed…it was literally freshman year, we were watching Ways of Seeing with John Berger and there’s this episode where he talks about how, even when we look at ourselves in the mirror we changed our faces and our posture to be the most like perfect representation of ourselves….and so even the mirrors are distorting our own reality and our perception, and only when we catch a glimpse of ourselves un-composed or unaware do we actually see the reality…and it shocks us. Cause we’re like, why am I so fucking ugly?

something I hated it at first but now I’m fine. So maybe I need to record a bunch of videos of my own face and watch them Esha: Surveillance Kris: Yes, self-surveillance. But I think it’s just because it’s like, I’m so not used to seeing my own face in a way that I haven’t perfectly, I don’t know, constructed. It’s jarring to see that sort of untouched reality or like quote unquote reality of it. I also think that social media can be a very freeing space. I don’t know. I like the anonymity of Reddit. And then I like tumblr a lot because people think it’s like a dead site which is really nice.

It’s like a nuclear blast went off and all the little cockroaches are left in the waste.

Esha: HA, yeah I kind of get what you mean. There’s this subreddit called r/amiugly. It’s really interesting though, because I think it opens your eyes to the realism of like what people look like which is really refreshing after only seeing perfect people Instagram…I remember when I first joined the subreddit and was like…I don’t think that anyone here is horrendously ugly because people…they just look like people. And I feel like when I was younger I internalized this fear of being perceived as ugly, so much so that I forgot that when I am in Safeway or walking on the street and I see someone, an alarm doesn’t go off in my head if they’re not conventionally attractive.

Kris: Uggo Alert!

Esha: Uggo Alert!!!! Exactly! For some reason this subreddit reminds me that most people don’t give a shit what other people look like in terms of like…going to the grocery store or the bank. Grown up stuff. Real life. People in the subreddit advice that’s always very constructive like try shaving your beard like this or try this haircut, this color looks good on you, that kind of stuff. And it just feels real.

Kris: Yeah. We’re just trying to get by in the capitalist hellscape.

We’re not trying to alert the uggo alarm. I walk into Safeway and they arrest me for being too ugly.

Esha: HA. Okay, let’s end it there. Thanks!

Esha: It’s quite literally a jump scare! The worst is when you’re like out and you think you look really good, only humbled by the reflection of yourself, you know, in some glass window. And you’re like, who’s that?

Kris: Ifeel like it’s like a struggle to become used to how normal I look when people take photos. That’s why I’ve been telling all my friends to like…take a lot of photos with me and then send them to me so I can just stare at them and make myself accustomed to myself. I’ve gotten really used to the sound of my voice ust from recording music. And I feel like it’s like

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bell hooks, Art on My Mind

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“Learning to know ourselves for who we really are, exploring our most authentic dreams, being able to reach a sincere awareness of oneself and of others, helping us to accept all the complexity of the human soul and not to hide behind deceptions imposed from outside: this important faculty of the psyche can guide us to more satisfying relationships and a fully happy life.

Learning to see and appreciate the presence of beauty is an ace of resistance in a culture of domination that recognizes the production of a pervasive feeling of lack, both material and spiritual, as a useful colonizing strategy. Individuals who feel constant lack will consume more, will submit more readily. We need co theorize the meaning of beauty in our lives so chat we can educate for critical consciousness, talking through the issues: how we acquire and spend money, how we feel about beauty, what the place of beauty is in our lives when we lack material privilege and even basic resources for living, the meaning and significance of luxury, and the politics of envy. Interrogating these issues will enable feminist thinkers co share certain strategies of resistance chat will illuminate the ways we can create a balanced, harmonious life where we know the joy of collective, progressive struggle, where the presence of beauty uplifts and renews the spirit.”

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conclusion

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I’m sure I know that there are some icky people out there, some misogynists, some generally mean people that, upon seeing what I’ve tried to communicate here, would assume that my effort to reject their beauty is a result of my not having it. That only those who have earned their beauty (as if it is an earnable thing) have the power to reject it.

Is it true? Do I feel the way that I do because their beauty was never an option for me? And if I had it, if it was mine, would I have ever come to any of these conclusions? And if I’ve been forced into my perspective would all of this be more valuable coming from someone who hasn’t, someone who is beautiful by their standards and still finds a way to reject them, to be critical of the source of their own validation?

Isn’t it so easy to love what you’ve never had and to hate it all the same?

To bite the hand that never fed you?

And as I sat there, writing what would be the last words, I couldn’t help but wonder: Am I Just Another Ugly Feminist?

I asked my friend this question in the middle of the night on a Wednesday.

She said No. They haven’t done it yet have they? she said. The beautiful people, they haven’t done it. You can only do it if you understand it and they will never understand it. Maybe when they’re 35 and their hair starts to gray or later when they’re 50 and the wrinkles come in. But by then it won’t matter. They can only do it now and they haven’t, and they’re not wrong for it, but they haven’t because

they can’t. I sigh. I suppose she’s right. Maybe they’ll do it one day and maybe on that day pigs will fly. I don’t know.

So we’ll do the thing one last time: after force feeding me insecurities these ancient systems of power beckon to me with a set of tools to make things better, a menu of solutions that I once thought would make me whole blah blah. You already know this part.

Unfortunately, the “making of wholeness,’ can’t be bought.

Wholeness is not a deal offered by the Devil. It is something that can only happen on the inside and it often requires the help of others. Healing is how we take our power back. Healing together is how we make sure that they can’t screw us over again. I’m nowhere near done (I don’t even think that done exists in this context), in fact I’ve really only just started, but I have learned that I don’t have to feel shallow for wanting to be the muse, the object of desire. For craving my commodification. I know now that I didn’t do that to me.

Do what you must to be better.

Indulge yourself, be with the people that make you feel safe, don’t judge yourself for being unhappy, if you don’t like something leave it, when you feel deeply write about it, go on walks, when you don’t know how you feel talk to someone, don’t forget to moisturize, stop entertaining misogynists, trust your gut, try botox if you’re curious, hiss at the next person that tells you to smile on the street, don’t lie to yourself, be supportive of your friends, wear whatever the hell you want, make friends that are

crazy in the same way that you are, hate Anna Wintour will the rage of a thousand suns, cry so much, watch films directed by queer women of color, hold yourself accountable, eat your veggies!, delete all of your social media and then redownload it but this time only follow your mom, your dog, and your three closest friends, have good meals, be unhinged, don’t worry about your cellulite, spend some time alone, stop being nice to people you dislike, give up on meditation if you just can’t do it, block all of the Kardashian-Jenners, don’t judge people: only be a hater when it’s warranted, always wear SPF, read as much as you can and know that it’s not a you problem when the writing doesn’t make sense, next time you take a terribly ugly picture of yourself don’t delete it just laugh, reclaim your history, don’t let people walk all over you, please go see a therapist, tell the little misogynist that’s been nesting in your head to shut up, set boundaries and respect them, drink a lot of water, and you know when you think about your people and your brain goes beautiful, but it’s not their beautiful, it’s your beautiful, like looking into the sun, like a flower that’s about to bloom, comprised entirely of love and respect and those moments when you just can’t stop laughing and there’s warmth radiating from your sternum- let that feeling linger. It will not be a 24/7 type of love, and it may not be a love that feels like love but it is love. It’s disgusting of me to tell you to love yourself, and if you don’t want to I respect your decision. But at least try liking yourself first. Just try.

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glossary a

ABLEISM Ableism is the systemic discrimination of and social prejudice against people with disabilities (mental & physical) based on the belief that typical abilities are superior. At its heart, ableism is rooted in the assumption that disabled people require ‘fixing’ and defines people by their disability and is deeply rooted in racism, eugenics, colonialism, and capitalism.

ACCESSIBILITY Refers to the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be easily usable by (and made convenient for) people with disabilities.

b

BIPOC A term that stands for Black Indigenous people of color. Similar to POC or People of Color but places extra emphasis on the struggles of Black and Indigenous folx, acknowledging that not all people of color face equal levels of discrimination.

BIWOC A term that stands for Black Indigenous women of color. Similar to WOC or Women of Color but places extra emphasis on Black and Indigenous women, acknowledging that not all women of color face equal levels of discrimination.

BLACK FISHING The appropriation of black style/culture/aesthetics in an effort to be trendy. Many sociologists have described blackfishing as a modern form of blackface. Blackfishing behaviors include falsely claiming to be black or bi-racial, co-opting the Black experience, and using makeup and certain hair styles to look black or racially ambiguous. Many celebrities and influencers commodify the Black experience when they blackfish, using the culture and aesthetics to make a profit while never having to experience the social disadvantages and oppression that come with being Black. Blackfishing is a form of interpersonal racism that is harmful, even when a person does not have discriminatory or harmful intentions, because it perpetuates stereotypes and portrays Black culture as a product.

BODY DYSMORPHIA Body dysmorphia or body dysmorphic disorder is a mental health disorder in which a person is unable to stop thinking about one or more perceived defects or flaws in their appearance — a flaw that appears minor or can’t be seen by others.

The perceived flaw and the repetitive behaviors cause significant distress and impact one’s ability to function in daily life.

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BODY IMAGE Body Image has to do with what a person believes about their appearance, how they feel about their body, height, weight, and shape, and how they sense and control their body as they move. A person’s body image will range from positive, or satisfaction with their body, to negative, or dissatisfaction with their body. A negative body image can contribute to body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), eating disorders, and other conditions.

BODY NEUTRALITY Body neutrality came to be in response to the body-positivity movement. Instead of requiring us to love our bodies no matter what at all times, body-neutrality supporters believe we should simply accept ourselves as we are. It’s about not beating yourself up if you have a low day or forcing positivity on yourself at all times. It’s about removing value from our appearances entirely.

BODY POSITIVITY Body positivity is about celebrating all bodies, regardless of size, color, or level of ability. Some fear that it’s now being used to turn a profit and that too much of the media’s representation of the movement features conventionally beautiful, mostly white, thinner, able-bodied women.

BOTOX Botulinum toxin, known as botox, is a neurotoxic protein which blocks certain chemical signals from nerves that cause muscle contractions. Botox injections temporarily relax the muscles, reducing the appearance of lines and wrinkles.

BRAZILIAN BUTT LIFT (BBL) The Brazilian Butt Lift, commonly known as the BBL, is a fat grafting procedure that utilizes excess fat collected from other areas of the body and inserts it into the buttocks to increase volume and projection.

c CAPITALISM Free market economy where private individuals or businesses own capital goods. Capitalism depends on the enforcement of private property rights, which provide incentives for investment in and productive use of productive capital.

CHOICE FEMINISM A branch of feminism which argues that women should exercise their freedoms by making any choices they want (and that these choices are justified and always politically acceptable). This is a feminism that is really only convenient for cis hit white women- it is not an intersectional feminism. Choice

glossary feminism encourages neoliberal values of individualism and consumerism, while downplaying the need for political and collective action against systematic inequalities.

cosmetic surgery to appear ESEA, and dressing in a manner that propagates ESEA stereotypes relating to gender and/or femininity.

CIS / CISGENDERED A term that refers to an individual whose personal sense of gender/gender identity aligns with their assigned sex at birth.

EUROCENTRICITY An interpretation of the world that champions European and Anglo-American values and experiences. The widely accepted idea that European culture is the culture of the world, in this context, that European standards of beauty define beauty around the world. European/Western beauty ideals include being thin and tall, having ‘perky’ breasts, long (blonde) hair, little to no body hair, light (but tanned) skin, large eyes, a small nose, high cheekbones, full lips, etc., etc.

CLASSISM Discrimination or prejudice on the basis of social class, the belief that one’s economic standing directly informs their social worth.

COLORISM A form of discrimination based on skin color in which people who share similar ethnicity traits or perceived race are treated differently. Implications of colorism are historically and socially intertwined with classism and racism.

COMMERCIAL MEDIA Media programming that is controlled by corporations as opposed to being state sponsored. The goal of commercial media is to capitalize on the mass media industries such as newspapers, magazines, television, and the internet.

CONSUMERISM the idea that increasing the consumption of goods and services purchased in the market is always a desirable goal and that a person’s wellbeing and happiness depend fundamentally on obtaining consumer goods and material possessions.

Consumerism has been widely criticized for its economic, social, environmental, and psychological consequences.

COSMETIC SURGERY Cosmetic surgery is a unique discipline of medicine which focuses on enhancing appearance through surgical and medical techniques. Cosmetic surgery can be performed on all areas of the head, neck and body. Includes surgical and non-surgical procedures.

COSMETIC SURGERY PARADOX The phenomenon through which women are encouraged to undergo cosmetic procedures in order to adhere to beauty standards but are simultaneously shamed for doing so.

f FACETUNE Facetune is a photo editing app that allows users to edit, enhance, and retouch photos. Social media users, influencers especially, are notorious for using the application to change the shape of their facial features (thinning their noses, making eyes larger, etc.) and make their bodies appear thinner or curvier in certain areas. Facetune essentially allows social media users to do on their iPhones what magazine editors have been doing for years with Photoshop and other highend image manipulation programs.

FATPHOBIA Obesity stigma; discrimination behaviors targeted at individuals on the basis of weight.

FEMINISM Feminism is an interdisciplinary approach to issues of equality and equity based on gender, gender expression, gender identity, sex, and sexuality as understood through social theories and political activism. Historically, feminism has evolved from the critical examination of inequality between the sexes to a more nuanced focus on the social and performative constructions of gender and sexuality.

e

FEMME / FEMME-PRESENTING A way to describe someone who expresses gender in a more feminine way, for example in their hair style, demeanor, clothing choice, or style. A femme can be a cis woman, a trans woman, a gender-nonconforming person, or a nonbinary person. This person may be a lesbian, pansexual, bisexual, or any other identity under the queer umbrella.

EAST / SOUTH EAST ASIAN BAITING The appropriation of East/South East Asian culture/styles/ aesthetics. ESEA Baiting behaviors include applying makeup in a manner that makes one look of ESEA descent, getting

FILLER According to the FDA, dermal fillers are gel-like substances injected under the skin. Dermal fillers are meant to create a

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glossary smoother or fuller appearance, or both.

FILTERS Social media filters, which started out as tools for photo editing (color, hue, saturation, grain, etc.), have spiraled into something dangerous. Beauty filters are essentially automated photo editing tools that use artificial intelligence and computer vision to detect facial features and change them. They use computer vision to interpret the things the camera sees, and tweak them according to rules set by the filters’ creator. Beauty filters commonly smooth skin, thin noses, enlarge eyes, lighten eye color, and enlarge lips.

g GENDER IDENTITY Gender identity refers to a person’s internal sense of being male, female or something else; gender expression refers to the way a person communicates gender identity to others through behavior, clothing, hairstyles, voice or body characteristics.

i INFLUENCER According to the American Influencer Council, influencers are “Instagrammers, TikTokers, YouTubers, Pinners, Snapchatters, bloggers, podcasters, photographers, animators, illustrators, online personalities, creatives, and custom content thought leaders.” Social media influencer marketing involves endorsements and product placement.

INSECURITY Insecurity is a feeling of inadequacy (not being good enough) and uncertainty. It produces anxiety about your goals, relationships, and ability to handle certain situations.

INSTAGRAM MODEL A social media user that used Instagram (or TikTok) to become famous. They exist outside of the traditional modeling scene, opting to post images of themselves online to gain heft followings. All Instagram models are influencers but not all influencers are Instagram models.

INTERSECTIONALITY Coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989, Intersectionality is an analytical framework that considers how different aspects of our identities (race, class, gender, sexuality, disability, etc.) come together to form unique experiences of privilege and discrimination.

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‘IN A VACUUM’ Separated from outside influence or contexts. (i.e it is impossible to develope political beliefs in a vaccum, you are influenced by your environment, experiences, etc.)

m MISOGYNY Misogyny takes sexist attitudes and acts on them in a hostile or violent way, and is often revealed through demeaning or denigrating comments. Misogyny often rewards women who reinforce the status quo set in place by the patriarchy and punishes those who don’t.

n NON-BINARY A term for gender identities that exist outside of the male/female gender binary. Many transgender individuals identify as non-binary, but not all non-binary individuals identify as transgender. Non-binary individuals use they/them pronouns or a combination of they, she, he pronouns (ex: she/they. they/he, etc.).

p PATRIARCHY Patriarchy is a form of political organization that distributes power unequally between men and women to the detriment of women. Feminist theory typically characterizes Patriarchy as a social construction, which can be overcome by revealing and critically analyzing its manifestations and institutions. The opposite of patriarchy is matriarchy.

PLUS-SIZE Refers to clothing for individuals that are above the “average size.” Plus-size models are a US 12/ UK 14 and above, while the curvy clothing ranges they model start from a US 12/ UK 14 and expand up to a US 30/ UK 28.

PRESCRIPTIVE BEAUTY NORM (PBN) Feminist writers have long critiqued the burden that beauty imperatives place on women. Many argued after feminism’s “second wave,” the pressure placed on women to pursue beauty increased dramatically, reflecting a backlash against women’s progress and increasing power in workplaces and other domains. The “prescriptive beauty norm” (PBN), is a term that describes this social phenomenon, where women feel social pressure to intensively pursue beauty.

glossary PRIVILEGE / WHITE PRIVILEGE A right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed by a particular person or a restricted group of people beyond the advantages of most.

The term white privilege originated in the US in the 1980s and refers to both the obvious and the hidden advantages afforded to white people by systemic forms of racial injustice.

r RACISM The marginalization and/or oppression of people of color based on a socially constructed racial hierarchy that privileges white people. Racism is a system consisting of structures, policies, practices, and norms—that assigns value and determines opportunity based on the way people look or the color of their skin. This results in conditions that unfairly advantage some and disadvantage others throughout society.

s SOCIAL MEDIA An internet-based form of communication where websites (most frequently in app form) such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Snapchat, etc. are used to share messages, images, and videos.

SEXISM Discrimination on the basis of sex or gender that is linked directly to the development of dominant hegemonic gender roles (maintains patriarchal social structures) and stereotyping. Ambivalent sexism is a theoretical framework which argues that there are two sub-components of sexism: Hostile Sexism and Benevolent Sexism. Hostile sexism is the most commonly identified form of sexism in which women are objectified or degraded by men or other women. Benevolent sexism is delivered under the guise of positivity (i.e. women are naturally better at cooking and cleaning, they should stay home!).

TRANS / TRANSGENDER Transgender is an umbrella term for persons whose gender identity, gender expression or behavior does not conform to the sex to which they were assigned at birth.

w WOMANISM / WOMANIST A womanist is a Black feminist or feminist of color. Black American activist and author Alice Walker has used the term to describe Black women who are deeply committed to the wholeness and well-being of all of humanity, male and female.

According to Walker, “womanist” unites women of color with the feminist movement at “the intersection of race, class, and gender oppression.” Womanism challenges the idea that feminism is not inherently intersectional.

WHITE FEMINISM A feminism which refuses to consider the role that whiteness and the racial privilege attached to it have played and continue to play in universalizing white feminist concerns, agendas, and beliefs as being those of all feminism and all feminists.

White feminism focuses on the experience of white, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied women. White feminism views equality as something women can achieve primarily through careerist endeavors and the exploitation of other women and marginalized people. The goal of white feminism is not to alter the systems that oppress women but to succeed within them.

WHITE SUPREMACY The belief that white people are superior to people of other races. the term white supremacist has been used to describe some groups espousing ultranationalist, racist, or fascist doctrines.

t THE BEAUTY MYTH A violent counter-reaction to the increasing social, political, and financial power of women which uses images of female beauty as a weapon against their advancement. The result is an obsession with perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society’s definition of “the flawless beauty.”

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About the Creator Esha Chekuri is a girl who is frequently irritated by life. She spends most of her time complaining but every now and then she gets her stuff together and actually does something about the things that bother her.

She is currently a senior in the Media Arts + Practice division of the USC School of Cinematic Arts and this is her thesis project.

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A Special Thanks To: DJ and Elizabeth for putting up with my nonsense and believing in me even though it took me 12,000 months to finish this project!

Harriet, Kayla, Kristin, Katie, and Kris for letting me interview them!

Sarah and Fidelia for offering their invaluable iMAP PhD wisdom! #zine/knittingclubforever Stacy for being so patient and helping with printing!

Dave and Sonia for guiding me during my time at school and putting an amazing showcase together!

MA+P for being my home at USC

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the end :)

zine on beauty WRITTEN AND DESIGNED BY ESHA CHEKURI MAY 2022