You see it everywhere. On the Kardashian sisters, supermodels Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski, influencers, and celebrities. Itโs the โperfectโ face of an ethnically ambiguous woman, composed of a chiseled nose, filled lips, a Botoxed forehead, and other cosmetic work. For Tablet, Grazie Sophia Christie examines our cultureโs obsession with Instagram Face; the path toward โdoomed, globalized samenessโ in which women are just copies of one another; and how wealthy women can easily reverse what theyโve done to their face, discarding enhancements like just another fashion trend.
Instagram Face has replicated outward, with trendsetters giving up competing with one another in favor of looking eerily alike. And obviously it has replicated down.
But the more rapidly it replicates, and the clearer our manuals for quick imitation become, the closer we get to singularityโthat moment Kim Kardashian fears unlike any other: the moment when it becomes unclear whether weโre copying her, or whether she is copying us.
โHow do you quit troubleshooting yourself?โ In this intimate personal essay, a queer writer with body dysmorphia contemplates their physical appearance and what itโs like to have a condition that prevents them from truly seeing their body.
I canโt tell you what my partner sees when they look at my body, nor what my coworkers see when I turn on my Zoom camera. I struggle to build my digital avatar. Yes, I have brown hair and brown eyes. No, I am not very tall. Beyond thatโthe shape of my face, the width of my hips and thighsโis a mystery to me. Iโve searched for myself in puddles and in bathwater, in dressing rooms and at golden hour. Pictures and videos show me someone brand new, so I look harder; not for beauty, not always, but for some consistent self-outline.