Liz Moody

Whether we're trying to be influencers or not, we are posting and seeing the likes and seeing the comments.

And even just from our own friend group, like, oh, you look really hot here.

I've even noticed in my own content, my content is not about beauty.

It's really about feeling the best that you possibly can so that you can live your best life.

And I don't really have people who are following me.

Like, I want to follow a hot girl.

That is not my audience.

And if I post photos that show more of my body, like photos in a swimsuit or videos where I look more like the societal beauty standard, I get higher views, like noticeably higher views.

I get higher engagement.

I get so many comments on those.

I can see directly in my content how people react to me and engage with me in a completely different way when I am performing the current societal standard of beauty.

But I don't think that anybody is free from this.

We all have cameras on our phones.

We take thousands more pictures of ourselves than we ever used to.

And then we're looking at these pictures and we are zooming in and we're scrutinizing them.

We're all staring at our faces on Zoom all day, every day.

Even if you're like, I'm just going to work a normal job forever.

I do think that there's a twinge that a lot of us feel like this person is just being paid to take hot photos and videos of themselves while I'm like doing boring Excel stuff.

I think all of this has a real felt impact.

Okay, next up is GLP-1's plastic surgeries, veneers, essentially this idea that we can buy the societal beauty ideal.