Ugh, this is reminding me of when my (male) partner paid an artist to draw us as cartoon characters. She drew my partner fairly accurately but definitely came up with a fantasy of me. For starters, I was shorter and smaller than my partner in her drawing, despite the fact that I am taller and larger (and the photos my partner sent reflected this). IRL I have a large nose...which was replaced with a teeny one. The result: my cartoon partner embracing a tiny cartoon woman snuggling into his chest. And then I felt bad saying well it doesn’t look like me because it was a gift.
Yes, 100% yes!!! Beauty standards are just another way that we agree to assimilate ourselves to White culture, and the amount you assimilate yourself is directly equal to the amount of success you are considered to have socially. The more you're able to cut yourself off from your body and heart, the more status you'll have in our American mainstream society. And of course that is by design. As you've pointed out before, the farther we are from our bodies the farther we are from our true personal power and the easier to control. I find the body to be the only portal through which I can truly experience the divine. The more I become in tune with my body and my desires (this is why it's so important in our culture to slut shame women) the more I can hear my intuition and feel my spiritual connection to all that is. When I saw my body as my enemy, that connection felt non-existent and I felt entirely lost and miserable. Diet and beauty culture are huge ways that culture enacts control and trains women to uphold standards and train their children (as women as still expected to be primary caretakers by society) to do the same. I've been circling a lot around this idea that women (mainly white women) are the main enforcers of the patriarchy, at least in American society.
Currently I've been feeling certain that when I walk out into the world after hours of beauty labor, what I am truly communicating to community members around me is my willingness to conform to White mainstream society, and through that a belief (unconscious or otherwise) in it's supremacy and correctness. I communicate this willingness through beauty standards, but culture comes all as one bow-tied unit - there is no picking and choosing. If you uphold social standards in one area, you support the toxic whole. When I wear foundation and contour, I am broadcasting my agreement with all of White culture right on my face. I feel it when I choose to perform White beauty now - like a giant pro-dominator/colonizer-culture flag waving in the place of my natural human face.
I am so so so afraid to mess with my face, I can’t imagine what kind of pressure and drive and peer competition people are feeling to have fat removed from their faces. So scary.
Ai is literally showing us how sick our culture is. There is no glitch. This is what society thinks of women. I can’t fathom why people are sharing them. It’s so disturbing.
I love how you linked the way AI-generated art steals from artists to the concept of extractive beauty/beauty-as-colonialism from previous articles. I feel like many people don't understand that these AI are simply fed existing images en-masse in order to spit back out shoddy imitations of them. The AI can't exist without MASSIVE amounts of human-made art, and many corporate beauty trends wouldn't exist without the unrecognized labor or people who go unpaid (usually women, often women of color). And then there's the beauty standards that are, as you said, just white people trying to mimic features of people of color. Interesting (and depressing) parallels!
Thanks for writing about this! I’ve also seen multiple people point out that most of these AI apps also lighten users’ skin tones. Dark-skinned people’s avatars tend to appear several shades lighter than their actual skin was in the photos they used. Lots of layers to the white supremacy at play here.
Dec 18, 2022·edited Dec 18, 2022Liked by Jessica DeFino
Several male Facebook-friends (from my own should-know-better generation, 50-ish years old) have proudly shared their new ‘portraits’ on their timelines, and it made me want to weep for them - it’s like a toddler proudly showing their poop… It means n-o-t-h-i-n-g. Didn’t know about the creepy financial/socio-economic backstory - thank you again, Jessica - but I can’t say I’m surprised. Stay away folks.
This Substack remains the best $5 I spend each month.
Ugh, this is reminding me of when my (male) partner paid an artist to draw us as cartoon characters. She drew my partner fairly accurately but definitely came up with a fantasy of me. For starters, I was shorter and smaller than my partner in her drawing, despite the fact that I am taller and larger (and the photos my partner sent reflected this). IRL I have a large nose...which was replaced with a teeny one. The result: my cartoon partner embracing a tiny cartoon woman snuggling into his chest. And then I felt bad saying well it doesn’t look like me because it was a gift.
Yes, 100% yes!!! Beauty standards are just another way that we agree to assimilate ourselves to White culture, and the amount you assimilate yourself is directly equal to the amount of success you are considered to have socially. The more you're able to cut yourself off from your body and heart, the more status you'll have in our American mainstream society. And of course that is by design. As you've pointed out before, the farther we are from our bodies the farther we are from our true personal power and the easier to control. I find the body to be the only portal through which I can truly experience the divine. The more I become in tune with my body and my desires (this is why it's so important in our culture to slut shame women) the more I can hear my intuition and feel my spiritual connection to all that is. When I saw my body as my enemy, that connection felt non-existent and I felt entirely lost and miserable. Diet and beauty culture are huge ways that culture enacts control and trains women to uphold standards and train their children (as women as still expected to be primary caretakers by society) to do the same. I've been circling a lot around this idea that women (mainly white women) are the main enforcers of the patriarchy, at least in American society.
Currently I've been feeling certain that when I walk out into the world after hours of beauty labor, what I am truly communicating to community members around me is my willingness to conform to White mainstream society, and through that a belief (unconscious or otherwise) in it's supremacy and correctness. I communicate this willingness through beauty standards, but culture comes all as one bow-tied unit - there is no picking and choosing. If you uphold social standards in one area, you support the toxic whole. When I wear foundation and contour, I am broadcasting my agreement with all of White culture right on my face. I feel it when I choose to perform White beauty now - like a giant pro-dominator/colonizer-culture flag waving in the place of my natural human face.
I am so so so afraid to mess with my face, I can’t imagine what kind of pressure and drive and peer competition people are feeling to have fat removed from their faces. So scary.
Ai is literally showing us how sick our culture is. There is no glitch. This is what society thinks of women. I can’t fathom why people are sharing them. It’s so disturbing.
I love how you linked the way AI-generated art steals from artists to the concept of extractive beauty/beauty-as-colonialism from previous articles. I feel like many people don't understand that these AI are simply fed existing images en-masse in order to spit back out shoddy imitations of them. The AI can't exist without MASSIVE amounts of human-made art, and many corporate beauty trends wouldn't exist without the unrecognized labor or people who go unpaid (usually women, often women of color). And then there's the beauty standards that are, as you said, just white people trying to mimic features of people of color. Interesting (and depressing) parallels!
this is the most important thing I've read all month. Thank you.
Thanks for writing about this! I’ve also seen multiple people point out that most of these AI apps also lighten users’ skin tones. Dark-skinned people’s avatars tend to appear several shades lighter than their actual skin was in the photos they used. Lots of layers to the white supremacy at play here.
I will never get over the fact that people get their cheeks removed 🤕
Several male Facebook-friends (from my own should-know-better generation, 50-ish years old) have proudly shared their new ‘portraits’ on their timelines, and it made me want to weep for them - it’s like a toddler proudly showing their poop… It means n-o-t-h-i-n-g. Didn’t know about the creepy financial/socio-economic backstory - thank you again, Jessica - but I can’t say I’m surprised. Stay away folks.
Just excellent!!!
EVERYTHING HERE. YES.