Observing "the gradual emergence, among professionally beautiful women, of a single, cyborgian face."

"It’s a young face, of course, with poreless skin and plump, high cheekbones. It has catlike eyes and long, cartoonish lashes; it has a small, neat nose and full, lush lips. It looks at you coyly but blankly... distinctly white but ambiguously ethnic.... 'It’s Instagram Face, duh. It’s like an unrealistic sculpture. Volume on volume. A face that looks like it’s made out of clay.'... There was something strange, I said, about the racial aspect of Instagram Face—it was as if the algorithmic tendency to flatten everything into a composite of greatest hits had resulted in a beauty ideal that favored white women capable of manufacturing a look of rootless exoticism. 'Absolutely... We’re talking an overly tan skin tone, a South Asian influence with the brows and eye shape, an African-American influence with the lips, a Caucasian influence with the nose, a cheek structure that is predominantly Native American and Middle Eastern.... People are absolutely getting prettier... The world is so visual right now, and it’s only getting more visual, and people want to upgrade the way they relate to it.'"

From "THE AGE OF INSTAGRAM FACE/How social media, FaceTune, and plastic surgery created a single, cyborgian look" by Jia Tolentino (in The New Yorker). Nice animated illustration at the link.

That made me think of "Number 12 Looks Just Like You" — summarized, with clips, perfectly in less than 2 minutes, here:



"I don't want to be transformed! I want to stay ugly!"