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.