The Pretty Problem
White women, especially white feminists, need me to lean in to pseudoreligious consumerist teachings that beauty is democratic and achievable. Beauty must be democratic. If it is not, then beauty becomes a commodity, distributed unequally and, even worse, at random.
Tressie McMillan Cottom • Thick: And Other Essays
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... See more
Jia Tolentino • Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
Whereas the millennial women of Instagram — the millennial women associated with the “that-girl” trope — would strike the perfect pose and use filters to enhance their natural beauty, Gen-Zs use their phone cameras to distort the natural ideal of the human face, obscuring their features with emojis, cartoon glitter, surreal lighting and other... See more