Beauty standards are a set of rules and guidelines that we’ve spoken about hundreds of times before. We live in a time where it feels hard to keep up with them. We’ve discussed how pretty privilege can quite literally make you more successful in your career, the halo effect and how people with more symmetrical faces are viewed as more trustworthy. But, today we are taking a deep dive into how much social media and AI have changed the way that we view ourselves and if they’re to blame for the impossible beauty ideals that we are expected to live up to!

Today we’re joined by someone who has spent years studying the way beauty culture shapes us, pressures us, and sometimes totally warps how we see ourselves.

Carly, or Carlz J Söda, is a photographer and a researcher and her thesis looks into how social media, AI, and beauty standards collide and what that collision is doing to our sense of self.

We speak about:

• How we all seem to anticipate criticism that we might get for the way we look, and change ourselves before anyone else has the opportunity to criticise us
• The concept of ‘digital lateral surveillance’ - a theory of how we police each other
• How facetune and photoshop have affected us psychologically
• Are we to blame for AI’s ‘beauty ideals?’
• The cost of ‘beauty’
• The Kardashians being victims of the beauty standards that they themselves perpetuate
• How the selfie camera distorts what you look like

You can find more from Carlz at her instagram and her website

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Hosted by Britt Hockley & Keeshia Pettit

Produced by Keeshia Pettit

Video Produced by Vanessa Beckford

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