Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women

We invited each other into our spaces when parents would allow – girls only in these altars of beauty. We were christened into girlhood, not by holy water or the consumption of Christ’s body and blood, but with these rituals – painting each other’s faces, playing with each other’s hair, making each other over, doing our worst because we were allowed and laughing until we lost all control of our limbs, collapsing in a heavy pile of happy tears. There was an intimacy that was so pure, as deep as if we were real sisters. Our lips frosted with sugar, giggling under duvets, talking about kisses and crushes and trying our hardest not to fall asleep – fighting to keep the night alive.

When Audre Lorde wrote that oft-instagrammed quote: 'Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare,' she didn't mean that self-care should be selfish or a form of self-flagellation, that it should be an overpriced moisturizer or a painful procedure. Self-care, in reality, is supposed to coincide with community care. It means taking time for yourself so that you can better support those around you - resting so that you can be a part of the revolution, helping other women with child-care, prepping meals for those in need or providing a voice for the voiceless. We, as women, win and lose together. Sorority is self-care.

Much like Sylvia's Plath's famous line in The Bell Jar, as Esther tries to reassure herself of her place in the world - 'I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am' - the fervour with which we create content, capture ourselves, our rooms, our outfits, our possessions, and the ardour with which we turn ourselves inside out in the digital realm feels like a repeated reassurance: I was here, I was here, I was here.

That mythical being, the most beautiful woman in the world, now has light skin chemically darkened with dihydroxyacetone, the chemical used in artificial tanner. (It is important that she begins as light before the darkening – she cannot simply be dark.) She has had her nose broken and reconstructed to be straight and small, and her lips injected with synthetic hyaluronic acid, whilst fat has been beaten out of her body and redistributed to her hips, bum and breasts to create a more exaggerated curve, not dissimilar to that of Sarah Baartman. Everywhere else she is athletic and lean – her stomach is flat and tight. She cannot simply be curvaceous or lean, she must be both and neither. She must be constructed. All of the hair on her body has been removed with a laser whilst her teeth have been filed down into fangs and replaced with porcelain, electric white. She wears the hair of an Asian woman sewn close to her scalp, and her eyes have been stapled up at the outer corner. Where is she from, people ask. Where does the most beautiful woman in the world call home? She laughs coyly, flashing her dazzling smile, but says nothing. She says nothing when women are murdered by their governments for showing their long, luscious hair. Or when dark-skinned women, the ones with no use for the chemical dye, are killed in their homes by those meant to protect them. She does not discuss the teeth knocked out of women’s skulls by their partners or the little girls sexualised for the same features she parades, created from artifice. She is quiet when girls are bullied for their body hair, for their belly rolls and their burdensome bodies. She does not comment on the women of colour calling out for somewhere to belong, a space that’s truly theirs. She claims nowhere whilst taking everywhere, and she says nothing. She has no politics, no culture, no real stance on anything. She consumes but she does not contend (unless it can be made into content). Why should she? She’s the most beautiful woman in the world.

To be a woman is to exist in a changeling body, always on the brink of transformation.

The digital realm is itself a fountain of youth – there are always young, fresh people to follow online, elevated by the algorithm and pushed to visibility.

You look amazing for twenty-eight!’ I wondered what they thought happened when you dared to hit twenty-five – that your face fell off, your muscles melted, you disappeared into thin air, ceased to exist, to mean anything at all?

Preventative Botox doesn’t exist, it’s just Botox, and it’s wildly misleading,’ says Charlotte. ‘Even if you get Botox your entire life, as soon as you stop, you’d start frowning again, and the lines would start showing. And that isn’t a fucking bad thing!

The “cyborg question” around the Kardashians causes us to question whether it empowers women – are we more bionic with these additions to our beauty arsenals? Or do they fragment us into bits and pieces?

The archetypal exaggerated beauty of reality TV may hold currency on social media, in sex work and on shows such as Love Island but can often be a penalising factor in applications for blue-collar jobs in more ‘professional’ offline industries.

Her profiles are awash with high-flash images and designer shopping bags, expensive interiors and nightclub toilets. You would never guess she is broke, that the carrier bags are empty, that she buys expensive makeup to use once a month and the rest of the time is frugal with her routine.

It is convenient to play down the significance of beauty in our lives, to mark it as frivolous and trivial, denying its entrenchment in our social, cultural and economic standing.

South Asian women must remove all body hair whilst the hair on their head is coveted.

Getting to know your body, what brings you joy and makes you feel comfortable and confident is your greatest sexual power, not learning how to push your feelings aside in favour of somebody else’s pleasure.

The word ‘empowered’ was everywhere once more and it started to lose all meaning as it was co-opted and sold to those who needed it least. The celebrities who profited from ‘empowering’ naked selfies were actually already in possession of a great deal of power – including pretty privilege.

The curators of old have simply been replaced by tech bros who decide who gets to be on display and who gets ostracised.

The majority of us perform every day, by applying makeup, wearing high heels or apologising! profusely! as a form of subservience. The performance exists on a sliding scale – from applying lipstick to injecting your lips, from dieting to achieve a smaller waist to undergoing intense plastic surgery to create an hourglass shape.

Whether it’s tanning or lightening your skin, buying more products, investing in risky procedures, concealing some features and emphasising others. Something must always be changed or maintained or sustained in order for us to uphold the most vital of virtues.

Both a rallying cry and a refusal to suffer in silence, this is the defining book on what it feels like to exist as a woman today.