Welcome, we’re going to dig deep. We need to talk about our bodies, it’s always been just that you know. I hope you’ll stay, sit with the discomfort, ask yourself difficult questions, and heal a little more. This is personal, this is collective. And honestly, I’d love your support with this space. We’re stepping into the real here. Consider subscribing with me, pledging support eh?
Authenticity is slipping away, the demands for longevity and legacy are reaching new heights with new technology. The lines, contoured into a blur between what is real and what is not.
Social media (and even ) continue to push AI apps, features and tools in order to determine the beauty and or authentication of ‘name the thing’ —ultimately to harvest our attention, to sell our eyes, our ears and now our bodies to billion-dollar developers who strip us of our authenticity, only to resell it to us, as if it was never ours.
The Essay
In a recent article, in the New Yorker, Jia Tolentino reported:
“Now we have arrived at a place where you can acquire Instagram Face at your local strip mall and the monied are seeking facelifts instead. Instagram Face can be achieved with little tweaks and outpatient procedures, although the results are often overtly artificial”
Lipfillers and Botox are more accessible and a client can use app imagery to show the practitioner or a salon owner what they want.
A new generation no longer fashions after their favorite celebrities with upsell clothes or magazine pages on their walls. Instead they’re modeling after a version of themselves that doesn’t exist, and it’s nothing more than collected data points scanned into an anthology of information reshaping their perception of what beauty can be.
The article also notes the Jenner / Kardashian plastic surgeries, Lindsey Lohan’s face-lifts and how the modern celebrity, itself, sells what its sold because they refuse to get old, refuse to embrace age. So then, cultural machine partners the “monied” with a browser’s AI sales pitch to suggest the best surgeries, procedures and products for aging to a mass audience.
Tolentino explained,
The A.I.-generated squib at the top of my results told me that surgical facelifts are uncommon for thirtysomethings, and that early aging is “typically treated” [!] with injectables and laser resurfacing. The range of visible argument is so limited. It’s not hard to understand why so many young people, living their lives in dialogue with what they see on their phones, have gone from buying into the idea of “proactive” Botox to believing that visible aging, in any form, at any age, should be treated as one would treat a disease.
The article is a worthy exposé on how AI feeds the 9x16 frame a message, targeted, often at teenagers and younger adults.
What was more fascinating, was its focus on young men and what’s being called “looksmaxxing.” Sigh. Yeh, our sons are affected by all this too.
The Manosphere rages over giving men the tools and tips to look like “real men” which keep them in shame, and desperation for approval from each other, while touting its a manly performance to get women.
From drugs to supplements to dangerous practices with hammers striking their face with blunt objects (?!) to… break their bone structure on the grotesque myth their bones grow back “thicker.” I will spend no time on this (please make sure your sons don’t do this shit).
One of the influencers mentioned, Braden Peters was quoted as saying,
“I have, like, no regard for, like, my happiness, like, that seems like a very immature idea.” A few months later, he collapsed at a club after a suspected overdose.
~ he’s frequently take peptides and testosterone and he’s only 20-years old, all the while seems more interested in wanting the option of “getting the girl” than actually having her. And, it speaks loudly to the “homoertocism” of men (Marilyn Frye), rather than their own self-improvement, or having real and honest relationships with women, for who they’d prefer to dominate and degrade and blame while controlling women’s looks (demanding natural, but chasing those who are botoxing and trashing trans-communities, smh).
Tolentino said it well,
“…It is disembodied attention, mediated by the screen, that many young people, both men and women, seem to eroticize.”
And therein lies the problem, the screens then are controlled by something bigger, more monstrous.
A Sinister Goal to Reproduce Dorian Gray
A few years ago, I saw a modern take on The Picture of Dorian Gray, (2021) directed by Tamara Harvey. It played with Dorian’s predicament as an App instead of a Painting (could the 19th century story itself be more prophetic?). Filmed and delivered during Covid, it offered a commentary already growing on the internet and perhaps now, seems to be reaching a climatic stage.
Dorian (Fionn Whitehead) uses an app to filter his look, created by his friend Basil Hallward, to start a YouTube channel and gains viral level followers. He’s a pretty boy, and the story is told somewhat-backwards with close witnesses retelling it in something of a dark mockumentary.
He touts “You’re only as good as your last pic.”
His star image online never fades. He flirts with Harry (played Alfred Enoch whose performance is fantastic), has a Grindr account and falls in love with a struggling artist, Sybil. It’s all fashionable high-life of the 21st century (brilliantly playing off Wilde’s queerness).
Yet, behind the scenes, his mental health becomes depraved, corruption and cyber bullying take its toll. His skin is gauntly, and deteriorating. He’s isolated to his screen, alone and locked away while curating a narcissistic image of himself which hides his blemishes, whitening skin and withering body.
A near perfect metaphor.
In Zoolander (2001), the story played out through the modeling world. Zoolander and Hansel are nemesis, until they realize they’re saturated in a system which aims to use them pawns in a sinister game, to shield elitists from being exposed ~ human rights abuses, corruption and global domination.
The truth rooted in art and now being weaponized in real time.
From plastics in the sea water to a person’s skin to ‘maxxing’ and a permanent blue steel InstaFace, trauma takes new residence in the body and emerges as a filter with a synthetic imagery, put on display, while it’s stolen, and sold under the thumbs of tech-bros.
The canvas is sold over and again to the corruption of commodified portraits, crafted by elites who demand their legacy in airbrush, as they deteriorate.
Who better to market than a younger generation they can “clone” so to speak? (It’s very Orphan Black vibes)
But let’s get one thing white-boy-straight~
Patriarchal beauty standards are based on pedophilia. Read that again. The “Epstein Class” isn’t new, nor a phenomenon, it’s an ancient ritual, to turn girls into objects and train boys to become inheritors, while keeping them pubescent, and therefore controlled and subservient
For young men and women, they’re stuck in a paralyzing fear of aging, of being discarded or forgotten. And so the disassociation from their body comes through modification based on myths which promise an outcome which…never comes.
We’re not talking about lighting and contouring or styling. We’re talking about removing humanness entirely, we’re talking about a raging obsession into a robotic aesthetic.
Returning to the Real
And so, this is where I drop in to a personal moment, right? The solution? I don’t know. We can grapple with the gravitas of this, but here’s what I’ll offer:
You see, I grew up with grandmothers. I grew up seeing 3-women (one, a great, we called Granny) age, wrinkle, flick their flab and poke their cellulite with hilarious cackles as they applied lotion, and stripped a wig (chemo) because it was too itchy. I grew up watching them in awe and thinking they were the most beautiful women in all the world, with sparkles in their eyes when we played games, or cooked in the kitchen or watched The Golden Girls and I Love Lucy reruns.
I also grew up with a younger mother who had a lot of body-shame (“ugh I’m fat!” she’d say and was not), with 2-parents who critiqued my looks all the time (imagine, a product of them!). Most of my life, I’ve been bullied over my height, my features, reduced to those pedophilia-like standards (“oh you look so young!” Ick), too skinny here, too thick there, not enough of this, too much of that, purity culture and so much more to flagellate me.
I had conflicting examples. And as a survivor, I’ve had to work hard to come home to my body. Most women do. No, I do not share this for pity or praise. I share it because it’s almost every woman’s story in some form or fashion (Gents, look to your left and right, She will have a story, but maybe you do too).
And I, we are all still working on it. Even Jane Fonda swore off new plastic surgeries expressing regret, and Courtney Cox has stopped injectables, both beautiful women trying to get some semblance of their bodies back.
I’m going gray and always appreciate when my friends notice my shiners. (And I adore my friends who are already salt and pepper) PeriM is settling in, so regulating my body temperature is new game, with added body freckles and wearing my hair wild around a face with developing lines delights me all the same. I don’t look younger, I look exactly as I am.
Women my age are stepping into a moment, where shame doesn’t get a vote. What we’re fighting against is the “anti-aging” demands of western society, which wants to fold us back into the shame we’re shedding. Our purpose then, hopefully, is to raise our daughters and sons differently, but it’s a fight.
I dare believe in ‘my body my choice,’ and it applies to all genders, and I believe in gender affirming care. I believe modern medicine, and surgery can help people come home to their body (shout out to trans-fam and breast cancer survivors!). I also honor aging.
What I want to encourage women and men both to do is reflect on their relationships with it (Rosie O’Donnell recently did this before deciding to get a face lift).
And, what I hate to see is the pain of disembodied young people whose narcissism is a coping mechanism, in which body modification, and instagram face are nothing more than addictive fillers to hide shame.
I want our kids to know they are beautiful as they are, and they can be who they want to be for themselves rather than for a system or a crowd or an undeserving partner.
I want aging to be IN (some 40s/50s women we’re striving here!), I want our kids to look up and see our lines and stretch marks and popping veins with the same curiosity I had with my grandmothers.
I want survivors to fuckin’ feel our bodies so intimately, nothing can demand our staging, anymore. We —I get to command the space, my features, looks, and delivery.
These are the messages we need to spread. These are the conversations we need to have with our kids, and a younger generation. It’s not about body positivity as much as it is body recognition and body wholeness and body kindness.
As a woman with tatts, I see how my body can be a canvas to remind me of who I am and how I want to show up in the world. I also understand, I’m up against a system which not only wants me to hate my body, but wants to profit off of her.
And that, is something we must all resist, so our souls don’t rot and follow the stupor of aging wealthy men who desperately want access to life’s creationism, a function they cannot naturally create on their own.
You made it to the end! Well I’m glad. Listen, Bodies in Resistance is a reader-supported publication. And I’d love you to support this space, stay awhile. Paid subscribers are able to join comments on posts, will be able to join lives and potentially more connection with me. Join this space and know your body in resistance is welcome!
Ash is a artist/writer, commentator and coach whose focus is giving women a voice to reclaim their body and hold their story with power. To connect, intv/podcast or work with, email her here.
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