The Class Politics of Instagram Face

You see it everywhere. On the Kardashian sisters, supermodels Bella Hadid and Emily Ratajkowski, influencers, and celebrities. It’s the “perfect” 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 culture’s obsession with Instagram Face; the path toward “doomed, globalized sameness” in which women are just copies of one another; and how wealthy women can easily reverse what they’ve 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 singularity—that moment Kim Kardashian fears unlike any other: the moment when it becomes unclear whether we’re copying her, or whether she is copying us.

Grieving the Loss of a Feminist Friend

On Sunday, my world got just a little darker when one of my oldest friends died suddenly. I first met Jennifer 37 years ago in the context of a medieval group I belong to. She was one of the first people I knew who broke the second-wave stereotypes of feminism. She was married for over… Continue reading Grieving the Loss of a Feminist Friend

The world is changing its perception of larger active bodies but not Garmin

So it turns out, according to Garmin, that my fitness age is 74. My fitness is poor and I’m in the bottom 5 percent for my age bracket. Colour me shocked. I thought it was because of inactivity due to knee replacement surgery. Garmin doesn’t track my weightlifting or my physio so all it knows… Continue reading The world is changing its perception of larger active bodies but not Garmin

This month’s newness? Yoga!

I have to say, every month as I settle in to write my blog post, I realize I am about to write about something that might seem totally unremarkable to many of our blog readers. I am, in fact, a work in progress when it comes to my relationship with activity, and with my body.… Continue reading This month’s newness? Yoga!

On Reflection

“How do you quit troubleshooting yourself?” In this intimate personal essay, a queer writer with body dysmorphia contemplates their physical appearance and what it’s like to have a condition that prevents them from truly seeing their body.

I can’t 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 that—the shape of my face, the width of my hips and thighs—is a mystery to me. I’ve 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.