My algorithm wants me to hate myself

15 minutes. That’s the time I give myself to scroll in the mornings while I sip the first coffee of the day and wait for the mush of my grey matter to formulate a cohesive thought. I envy morning people, but at this point I know I will never join their ranks. No 4am writing club for me!

In 15 minutes, I’m already both weary and wary—convinced that my Instagram feed hates me. Not me personally. I don’t kid myself that there’s anything personal about it. That I’m in any way special, and that’s what so depressing. The algorithm hates all women in my demographic. Maybe it hates us more than it hates other demographics, I don’t know.

As I inch ever closer to 50, the push is relentless. Every ad tells me something about my appearance needs fixing. What it doesn’t know is that I’ve been happily growing out my greys for some time now. It doesn’t know that I’m boldly going where few women go these days—bravely trying to “age naturally” whatever that means. So far, I haven’t touched fillers or enhancers or semaglutides. I don’t much bother with expensive creams or formulas, though my feed insists I need all of these things to be an acceptable human being.

In 15 short minutes, I lost track of the number of ads—of other women, mostly—telling me what’s wrong with how I look. Here is just a smattering of the selection I scrolled past. And we wonder why women are so hung up on our appearances.

It feels like a losing battle. I might have clicked one ad, once upon a time. I don’t remember. Since then I have been waging a veritable war. (Hey, if Madge isn’t winning, ain’t nobody winning.) I heart the things that make my heart sing: reels of bulldogs (or any dogs, really), Gen X and ‘80s memes, autism content, performances of indie and grunge music from my youth. But so far, my efforts are in vain. The algorithm isn’t budging. It doesn’t care what I want to see. It’s like that scene in A Clockwork Orange where the main character has his eyelids forcibly pinned open. Every ad telling me how to fix my body, my hair, my skin, and my face generally.

The machine is barking up the wrong tree, though. Because this particular tree rarely wears a bra, let alone makeup. This tree refuses to get a trainer, let alone a gym membership, preferring to walk the dogs instead. This tree (by and large) refuses to get sucked into neurotypical beauty norms.

Research indicates that autistic females may be less likely to subscribe to conventional feminine norms and the obsession with “performing femininity.” So we may be less likely to invest in all the trappings that cost a small mortgage.

On the flipside, many autistic women (especially the late diagnosed among us) mask and we mask very well, thank you. Part of that masking may, quite literally, involve wearing a mask. Which means ensuring our clothes, hair, and even our faces, look a certain way so we will avoid standing out. Personally I prefer Dr. Seuss’s credo:

"Why fit in when you were born to stand out?"

Not least of which many of us eschew these beauty norms simply because our sensory needs preclude us from partaking. Case in point: I sometimes choose to wear foundation, yet I am hyper-aware of the ick feeling on my skin when I do.

I personally find it demoralizing (rather than empowering) having to contend with the barrage of ads. It’s hard to be a woman. I know, in other news: water is wet.

But I wonder what it might be like to swap feeds with my husband for a day. In between all the motorbikes and dad jokes and dog memes, maybe the machine is also telling him he needs to get ripped and bulked up. Maybe the machine is insisting that he too needs to fix his hair and face and body if he wants to be a halfway acceptable man in his middle age.

Somehow I doubt it, though.

Self-care looks different for autists

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