We’re In Micro-Insecurity Hell | Allure [Video]

The more the virtual world entangles itself with IRL living, the more legitimacy we grant all the aesthetically aspirational content on our screens. “Having the perfect face and body—or the perfect image of the face and body in the virtual world like the so-called Instagram face—is becoming key to identity, [the] key to being ‘good enough,’” says Heather Widdows, Ph.D, a professor of philosophy at the University of Warwick who specializes in the ethics of beauty culture. “We believe that if we have the right face and body, if we are thin, firm, smooth, and young enough, then we will be rewarded with the good life.” Our image-based culture predicates and affirms this type of content, Widdows says. “In this context, any perceived flaws, however minor, are going to appear huge.”

Striving for the “correct” physical features is nothing new, but the rate at which the idea of what is “correct” …