https://www.newyorker.com/culture/decade-in-review/the-age-of-instagram-face

On Instagram, I checked up on the accounts of the plastic surgeons I had visited, watching comments roll in: “this is what I need! I need to come see you ASAP!”, “want want want,” “what is the youngest you could perform this procedure?” I looked at the Instagram account of a singer born in 1999, who had become famous as a teen-ager and had since given herself an entirely new face. I met up with a bunch of female friends for dinner in L.A. that night, two of whom had already adopted injectables as part of their cosmetic routine. They looked beautiful. The sun went down, and the hills of L.A. started to glitter. I had the sense that I was living in some inexorable future. For some days afterward, I noticed that I was avoiding looking too closely at my face.

This whole article was well-written and interesting to me as another example of paradox that seems to be emerging where the more freedom we have, the more we seem to conform to gendered expectations. For various reasons (free feel to discuss) this dynamic appears stronger in women. This article has made its way around various subs so I thought we might as well talk about the commodification of women cross-dressing as empowerment and strengthening beauty standards accelerated all by a heightened level of exposure via social media.

It's almost sad to see. I had a coworker who spent her birthday waiting endlessly waiting for a guy in a hotel hallway. When you look at her social media, it is pretty clear why. Every single photo of her just isn't her... She almost looks like her real self but it's an uncanny alternate reality version of her.

Anyway pretty open discussion on the article or any of the dynamics discussed within.