Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms WomenEllen Atlanta2024

We live in a new age of beauty. With advancements in cosmetic surgery, walk-in treatments, augmented-reality face filters, photo-editing apps, and exposure to more images than ever, we have the ability to craft the image we want everyone to see. We pinch, pull, squeeze, tweeze, smooth, and slice ourselves beyond recognition. But is modern beauty culture truly empowering? Are we really in control?

In Pixel Flesh, Ellen Atlanta holds a mirror up to our modern beauty ideal and the pressure to present a perfect image, to live in an age of constant comparison and curated feeds. She weaves in her personal story with others’ to reconfigure our obsession with the cult of beauty and to explore the reality of living in a world of paradoxes: We know our standards are unhealthy, but following them helps us succeed. We resent social media but continue to scroll. We know digital beauty is artificial, yet we strive for it.