Seven years after popularizing the term Instagram face, writer Jia Tolentino says the social media aesthetic she observed among white female influencers has matured into a broader pressure to conform, now amplified by AI and readily available cosmetic treatments. In a new essay, she contends that optimization culture has moved from apps into bodies, especially among the young.
Tolentino described the look as echoing app filters that lift cheeks, enlarge eyes, slim or heart-shape the chin, and plump lips, drawing comparisons to high-profile celebrities. In her view, what began as an online visual ideal has migrated into everyday life through plastic surgery, injectables and skin procedures pursued to align with an algorithmic beauty norm.
She argues the change touches more than appearance. It reshapes how people relate to reality. According to Tolentino, procedures once linked to middle age, such as Botox and fillers, are increasingly common among patients under 30. She also notes a rise in men and boys engaging in so-called looksmaxxing.
When faces can be filtered or surgically refined on demand, Tolentino says they risk losing their connection to lived experience. She does not frame aesthetic changes as immoral, but worries about the stream of online messages aimed at girls and young women telling them to perfect what they see in the mirror.
Interview highlights
How Instagram face blends features from multiple ethnicities
Tolentino recounts a celebrity makeup artist’s description of the composite look: brows and eye shapes with South Asian influences, fuller lips associated with African American aesthetics, a Caucasian nose, and cheek structures seen in Native American and Middle Eastern features. She says that when AI image generators are asked to produce a picture of a beautiful woman, results tend to be young, thin and white, yet incorporate those traits, which she argues contributes to the erasure of other faces and forms of beauty.
How the aesthetic moved from celebrities to the mainstream
What started among the professionally beautiful, wealthy and famous has spread as their images dominate feeds. Tolentino says it is now possible to approximate Instagram face at a local clinic or medspa in much of the United States. “If you are on social media, you see the way that people’s faces have become uncanny,” she says, pointing to frozen foreheads and fuller lips.
Anti-aging procedures among teens and young adults
Tolentino cites viral posts and online discussions where teenagers ask whether to begin Botox and young adults consider facelifts for perceived early signs of aging.
Instagram face and politics
On the so-called “Mar-a-Lago face”
Tolentino links a highly stylized look among women associated with the second Trump administration to earlier Kardashian-era aesthetics, now paired with heavier makeup. She characterizes it as a display of power that disregards ordinary human reference points. She also notes the tension she perceives when critics of gender-affirming care embrace cosmetic practices that she describes as fundamentally gender-affirming.
Parenting under the pressure of optimization
Reflecting on raising her daughter, Tolentino says she focuses on modeling values she can control. She wants her child to see her prioritize what is human over constant self-improvement, and to avoid conveying that a woman’s purpose is to be perpetually youthful or perfectly beautiful.
Tolentino is the author of the best-selling essay collection Trick Mirror.
