The Ugly Side of Beauty
Men actually hate the Insta-face. They just love not being burned at the stake for saying it.
Look around any American coffee shop and you’ll spot her: blow-up-doll lips, brows that look Sharpied on during a minor earthquake, cheeks so plastic-smooth they’d squeak if you rubbed them together. Somehow this became the default setting for “beautiful,” and the rest of us are expected to applaud like it’s the moon landing of makeup. Never mind that most of the clapping is sarcastic and performed under threat—because the moment you question the look, a digital firing squad appears, ready to scream “misogynist!” before you finish the sentence.
Ask men privately and they’ll roll their eyes so hard you can hear the optic nerves creak. The verdict is unanimous: real skin beats silicone chic every time. But the internet has trained guys better than any obedience school. Say “I prefer natural” in public and you’re instantly branded a caveman who wants women barefoot, pregnant, and cooking squirrel over a campfire. So they shut up, double-tap, and pray no one notices the irony: those heart-emoji likes are just modern survival instincts.
The absurdity began where you’d least expect mainstream America to shop for beauty tips—drag clubs. Onstage, drag makeup is Broadway on steroids: over-drawn lips you can spot from space, eyebrows pasted halfway up the forehead, contour lines bold enough to survive a solar flare. It’s theater. It’s art. It’s meant to look exaggerated because exaggeration is the point. Fast-forward and that stage paint is now buying oat-milk lattes next to you in line at Whole Foods.
Remember A Star Is Born? Early in the film Lady Gaga wanders backstage at a drag show and watches a queen with ceramic-white foundation and cartoonishly high fake brows belt out Edith Piaf. That scene was intended to showcase drag’s glorious excess. Five short years later, those same tack-on eyebrows are now Tuesday-morning Zoom-meeting staple. Artifice that once belonged to spotlights now rides the 7 a.m. commuter train—and somehow we’re all supposed to pretend we don’t notice the clown paint.
What’s worse is the sameness. Instagram used to be a gallery of individual faces; now it’s a conveyor belt. The algorithm spat out a single template—balloon lips, laminated brows, poreless “glass skin”—and everyone decided that individuality meant photocopying the mold. It’s beauty socialism: stand out by looking exactly like everyone else. The saddest joke? Half the women sporting the look confess—again, off the record—that they’re tired of maintaining it but terrified of losing relevance if they quit.
Back in the ’90s, Kate Moss needed little more than a dab of mascara and a cigarette to make headlines. Even the rhinestone chaos of the early 2000s still let you recognize a human face under all that shimmer. Today we outsource our pores to Photoshop, inflate our lips until they resemble stress balls, and sandblast bone structure until it mimics CGI. Progress, apparently.
So here’s an unpopular suggestion: maybe it’s time to call the bluff. Freedom of expression means you can wear a full drag face to pick up your dry cleaning, sure—but it also means the rest of us get to say it looks absurd without being accused of war crimes. Maybe men aren’t oppressors for admitting they don’t want to kiss a rubber raft. Perhaps women who opt out of the Insta-face aren’t “lazy” or “behind the trend.” And maybe everyone’s just sick of pretending the emperor’s new lips are stunning.
Beauty used to celebrate difference; now it Xeroxes the same avatar until the toner runs dry. If there’s any real glow-up left to chase, it’s this: ditch the template, bring back a pore or two, and rediscover the shockingly radical idea that a face—one with actual texture, personality, even the occasional wrinkle—can still be, well, beautiful.
In the meantime, the rest of us will keep clapping. Just don’t be surprised if it sounds suspiciously like slow, sarcastic applause.