Emma Stern's Eulogy for The Male Gaze

What is called beauty in the digital age is actually porn—an instant gratification of the senses that erases intimacy.

To go goblin mode is to take a stand against standards; a trend which has taken over not only social media, but current social justice efforts. In the name of progress, all cultural claims to perfection are increasingly coming under attack. Take the body positivity movement on Instagram (and now virtually every advertising campaign); what began as ... See more

Think of the smooth marble of the sculpted nude, or the supple roundness of the Venus de Milo: those proportions might not be the same ones exalted today, but to viewers of the time, the flesh, like the body itself, was perfect. A portrait can thus be judged by its adherence to the ideals of proportion: its skill in transforming the naked body into

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Unlike duckface, its IG-ready goals are filtered through the lens of detachment and irony. This contrast mirrors the culture at large: in the viral article ‘The Smartest Women I Know Are All Dissociating’, writer Emmeline Clein argues that the predominant feminist ethic has shifted from honest, near-painful earnestness to one of detachment, meta-ir... See more

The default assumption tends to be that it is politically important to designate everyone as beautiful, that it is a meaningful project to make sure that everyone can become, and feel, increasingly beautiful. We have hardly tried to imagine what it might look like if our culture could do the opposite—de-escalate the situation, make beauty matter le... See more

In the world of fake beauty, it is alway summer: sunny, bright, and without shadows—a land of ones and zeros where everyone is sexy and in the flush of life, never tired, broken, or irritated.

“beauty is supposed to serve power’s interests.”