Hey y’all!
Back in 2019, I made a video for For Harriet called Instagram is Bad for Black Women, and a few months later, Jia Tolentino published her essay The Age of Instagram Face in The New Yorker. Both of us were analyzing the same phenomenon—the way social media warps beauty standards and pushes women and girls toward a homogeneous, algorithmically-approved aesthetic.
Fast forward to 2025, and while the exact face and body that dominated Instagram may have shifted, the underlying mechanics of digital beauty culture haven’t changed.
In fact, we now have concrete proof that the platforms steer grown women and little girls toward a single ideal in order to optimize engagement.
The “Instagram Face” era of obvious fillers and exaggerated features has given way to the “Undetectable Era.” Everything old is new again! The new ideal still demands work, but insists on making it look effortless. Sound familiar?
The Algorithm Decides
“Online metrics push us toward a generic sameness. Some things just perform well.”
Social media platforms are not value neutral. Perhaps there was at time when we could’ve believed that Instagram or TikTok would provide everyone a seat at the table of beauty, but that naivete should’ve died long ago.
What started as a phenomenon among what Tolentino called “professionally beautiful women” (aka influencers and celebrities) has been the expected norm for about a decade.
Algorithms rewards conformity and pattern-matching. If you engage with these technologies, you opt into the endless loop where the rules change, but the expectation stays the same: keep up or get lost.
Beauty is Hustle Culture for Women
To my mind, the most important takeaway from revisiting this conversation is that beauty culture is hustle culture for women. This idea was concretized for me in Glamour Labour in the Age of Kim Kardashian by Elizabeth Wissinger.
Right after the election, Robin D.G. Kelley explained how Americans don’t see themselves as exploited laborers but as entrepreneurs running their own mini-businesses. Women and girls have internalized the same logic and applied it to our faces and bodies.
In contemporary beauty culture, looking pretty isn’t enough. We need to see the work. If you’re not enhancing, you’re losing, and the language of “empowerment” obscures the coercion.
It’s not “assimilation.” It’s “self-improvement.”
It’s not “coercion.” It’s “self-care.”
The “Undetectable” Era Is Here
Instagram Face isn’t dead, but now it’s for poor people. The new celebrity/rich lady beauty standard is all about invisible work—procedures that “don’t look like procedures.”
Women have realized that:
Surgery, while more expensive, offers “cleaner” long-term results.
This is why the rich girls are moving away from filler and into full-scale facial reconstruction. I was gonna list out all the women who’ve clearly gone that route, but that felt a little mean. I’m just gonna say, iykyk.
Shout Out to Little Baby Kim
Looking back at photos from my 18th birthday, I’m overcome with sadness because I felt confident in myself in a way that seems impossible for young girls today.
✨Book Recommendations✨
I’m wearing merch! You can cop the Are Y’all Okay? Sweatshirt here.
Full disclosure: My face looks weird af in this video because I tried to adjust the color of my foundation in CapCut because it’s too dark. Feel free to drag me, but please do it for the right reason! Thanks!
Share this post