Is Individuality Out of Style?
Symmetry, plumped lips, fillers and filters… When does a trend become an erasure of difference?
If you scroll through any social media app long enough, you’ll start to notice its Instagram face. The “golden” standard. A face that isn’t quite one person’s, but rather everyone’s all at once. You’ll see her everywhere, with her high cheekbones, button nose, and effortlessly perfectly blown-out hair… a look that is both recognizable and unsettling at the same time. This may feel futuristic and dystopian, but it is, in fact, ancient.
Making rash, harmful choices to fit beauty standards has been around since the beginning of time. In the Middle Ages, it was common for women to whiten their faces with lead creams and lotions. In the Victorian times, many ate tapeworms to maintain a thin figure. In the Renaissance Era, Italian women would use a liquified poisonous Belladonna plant to dilate their pupils, often leading to blindness. Why is this a norm we accept and continue to see every century? Every decade? How do we escape this viciously damaging cycle? The difference is now the poison isn’t in a bottle, it’s in our phones. Subtle, constant, and almost impossible to escape.
Technology is fueling what we now know as the “Instagram face” phenomenon. With FaceTune, filters, and AI being more advanced than ever before, the lines are increasingly blurred between technology and reality. This has harmful real-world implications… young, impressionable teens don’t know that the algorithm is quite literally working to reward content with this look. Surgical procedures are developed and made to match these digital filters. Technology isn’t just capturing beauty anymore, it’s creating it.
But it’s not just influences and social media pushing this idea of homogeneity in beauty… fashion brands and publications are cashing in too. There was recently a huge controversy regarding Vogue using AI models in their newest edition. The public was very upset, as Vogue is often regarded as the epitome of fashion as an art. If they’re using AI, what’s next? Not only is this problematic on the art front, but people are losing jobs. AI is putting Vogue’s, as well as other publications’, photographers, stylists, models, and more under. Even Sherri Hill recently unveiled an entire campaign using solely AI models to model their prom dresses. On the surface, it may look like
innovation, but Sherri Hill’s audience is largely comprised of young, impressionable women. What chance does individuality have if a prom dress brand tells you that your big night look should be worn by someone who isn’t even human?
The more a look dominates, the stronger its backlash becomes. During this past decade, there has been more emphasis than ever on body inclusivity, unique features, and individuality in modeling, beauty, and fashion, especially in high-fashion settings such as Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, and Gucci campaigns. Here, features like a tooth gap, vitiligo, freckles, or albinism are highly rewarded and sought out, which raises the question- where did we go wrong online? Where does this stark difference lie, where if you stray even a little bit from this unattainable standard, you are seen as less desirable? When does a trend become erasure, and how do we combat this?
Instagram face isn’t just another harmful beauty standard; it’s the first one created, enforced, and spread by technology itself. The loss of difference isn’t a coincidence; it’s a design. Additionally, while past beauty standards were localized, “Instagram Face” is global, constant, and tied to capitalism. While glossy campaigns once prided themselves on finding the next “it” face- a person with humanity, quirks, and a story. Now, Vogue and Sherri Hill, among many others, are using AI-generated models, literally coding beauty into zeros and ones. Unlike past standards that were local and fleeting, Instagram Face and the rise of AI are global, constant, and unyielding.
Escaping this cycle means more than celebrating differences on a runway; it means refusing to let computer-generated algorithms dictate what we buy, wear, or aspire to look like. Fashion may flirt with sameness, but it also has the power to reset the standard. Reward individuality, and remember: beauty was never meant to be copy-and-paste.
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