Are we all going to end up with the same face?

Stock image: Getty Images

Olivia Petter
© UK Independent

Take a look at the faces around you. Notice anything? The shapes of people’s eyes all tilting up in the same way towards their hairline? Pouts that pucker up with perfect uniformity? Cheekbones that protrude almost violently through the skin? Perhaps you don’t notice any of these things, in which case you’re already too far gone. But if you do? Well, it’s only a matter of time until you become indoctrinated. Because in 2024 beauty is a homogenous ideal, one that none of us can escape from.

“It is the face of some of the most popular women in our digital realm, from Kylie Jenner to Kim Kardashian, Bella Hadid to Emily Ratajkowski, and has formed the foundation of a new beauty industrial complex, in which a single facial aesthetic is popularised and idealised for the mass market,” says Ellen Atlanta, author of the new book Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women. “The result is a culture of homogeneous beauty, in which women covet each other’s features and strive for ideals that can only be achieved through augmentation – normalising injectable procedures, cosmetic surgery, photo editing and filter use in order to achieve the look (all of which have become increasingly accessible over the past decade).”