Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women

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'I am surrounded by women who are emblems of modern feminism and #Girlboss culture. These same women admit to me in private that the hardest part of the day is getting dressed, that they Facetune their photos, obsess over diets, break down over their appearance and spend thousands on invasive treatments.'

We now live in a new age of beauty. With advancements in cosmetic surgery, accessible tweakments, augmented reality face filters, photo editing apps, and exposure to more images than we were ever meant to see, we have the ability to craft ourselves in whichever way we please. We pinch, pull, squeeze, tweeze, smooth and slice ourselves beyond recognition. But is modern beauty culture truly empowering Are we really in control

In every era there is a beauty ideal. Yet, today, the pressure to attain and retain the perfect body is compounded by a need to present this perfect image across multiple media channels, to exist in constant comparison to curated feeds and the version of your life that you show online. In an age of influencers, mass circulation of images and the increasing commodification of the self, modern beauty culture is all-consuming and unavoidable, touching the lives of every young woman in the country.

From Love Island to lip filler, blackfishing to the beauty tax, Ellen Atlanta reconfigures our understanding of women's relationship with beauty culture to account for the digital age. Providing a fascinating account of the realities young women face under a dominant industry, Pixel Flesh unmasks the absurdities of the dystopia we find ourselves living in, acting as a rallying cry and a refusal to suffer in silence, forming a collective memoir of what it feels like to exist as a woman today.

Author Bio

Ellen Atlanta is a writer and brand consultant specialising in Gen-Z and millennial culture. She has worked in the beauty industry for almost a decade and was a founding editor of Dazed Beauty and consultant for industry heavyweights such as BeautyCon, Estee Lauder, Boots, FeelUnique, Milk Makeup, Flannels Beauty and The Unseen Beauty. With her focus on female empowerment, Ellen departed from the beauty industry in 2019 to become a founding member of both The Stack World and The Restless Network, reimagining social media platforms and creating better digital spaces for women+ . In 2021, she was headhunted to support UN Women UK on their digital campaigns, creating safer public spaces for women and marginalised genders across the country.