00:00:00- What's happening with how girls see their appearance?
00:00:02How's that changed over time?
00:00:03- Yeah, I mean, that's another crazy arms race.
00:00:08I mean, I talk about, again,
00:00:11with beauty influencers like Zoella that I grew up with,
00:00:15she would just do like a back-to-school makeup tutorial,
00:00:18and it would be very simple and basic,
00:00:22and there's nothing really harmful
00:00:25about teenage girls watching that.
00:00:27But again, the competition, the amount of influencers
00:00:30over the years that now have to compete for clicks and money
00:00:34mean that each beauty influencer also has to up their game
00:00:38and say something slightly more extreme
00:00:40or show something more extreme.
00:00:42So for example, you go from normal beauty tutorials
00:00:46to casual vlogs where you just show you
00:00:50getting a Brazilian butt lift in the middle of the vlog,
00:00:53and that becomes part of a standard beauty routine.
00:00:56And you see it with stuff like anti-aging
00:00:58where it's just a simple anti-aging routine
00:01:02then becomes like a 50-step anti-aging routine,
00:01:05and you need to do it younger and younger
00:01:07because the thumbnail that says you need Botox at 17
00:01:12does way better because people click it
00:01:14and wanna know more about it.
00:01:16And so it's in all aspects of life for young women.
00:01:19It's the mental health trends, it's the political trends,
00:01:22it's the beauty trends.
00:01:23Basically, social media will drag everything
00:01:26to its inevitable extreme.
00:01:28And then if you're spending most of your waking hours
00:01:31on social media, then that is no longer the extreme.
00:01:35That is where you're getting your information.
00:01:37It's where you're learning about beauty
00:01:39and relationships and politics.
00:01:41- Has Instagram and TikTok changed what we find attractive?
00:01:45- Yeah, I think so.
00:01:47I think it's more of a sort of avatar now
00:01:52where there's a terror of aging among young women.
00:01:57And so I wrote a piece ages ago about 12-year-olds
00:02:02worrying about wrinkles on Reddit forums
00:02:05and obsessively ruminating over pictures
00:02:08where they have aged,
00:02:10writing out all of the sun exposure they've had
00:02:14and checking, is this something
00:02:16that could make me look worse in the future,
00:02:18comparing all of their anti-aging routines
00:02:21and their children?
00:02:22- You need an aging routine.
00:02:26You need to actively be aging at that point.
00:02:28- Yes, yeah, yeah.
00:02:29Well, this is-- - Get more sun.
00:02:31- Sometimes it's girls worrying about wrinkles
00:02:33before they've got through puberty
00:02:35because they've grown up with watching influencers
00:02:38who are worrying about that
00:02:40and who are having to sort of exaggerate their neuroticism
00:02:43and up their neuroticism to get clicks.
00:02:45But then you have young girls,
00:02:47that's the first they encounter.
00:02:50First sort of young women role models they encounter
00:02:53who are warning them about this.
00:02:55And I think social media in general just makes you ruminate.
00:03:00And so girls already ruminate more than boys,
00:03:02but then they're on all these platforms like Reddit
00:03:05where you all co-ruminate together.
00:03:07The point is you talk about your problems
00:03:10excessively. - And there's an escalation
00:03:11on there as well. - Yeah.
00:03:12- There's always a sense of one-upmanship.
00:03:14I always see this with my friends that are conspiracy-minded
00:03:18and in a room it's kind of like an arms race
00:03:23to see who can go deepest down the iceberg.
00:03:27Oh, you think that Epstein was just a guy that had an island?
00:03:30Oh, you think he was just Mossad?
00:03:31Oh, you think he was just a reptile person?
00:03:33Dude, let me tell you, oh, that's cute.
00:03:35Let me tell you the real thing.
00:03:36And it's this, yeah, weird race to the bottom of the iceberg.
00:03:40And it's kind of the same here
00:03:41that there is this ratcheting up in intensity of this stuff.
00:03:46You see that most with the mental health stuff
00:03:49where it will be, oh, you think it's bad.
00:03:52You've got ADHD.
00:03:53Well, I've got autism and ADHD.
00:03:55(laughing)
00:03:56- And I've got a gluten intolerance
00:03:58and I've got a club foot and my dad walked out.
00:04:00- Yeah, exactly.
00:04:01And I think the platforms, again, they encourage that
00:04:04because you have all influencers are competing for attention,
00:04:09but then you have influencers whose whole brand now
00:04:13is their mental health diagnosis.
00:04:15They are the ADHD influencer.
00:04:18And I think that creates some very bad incentives
00:04:20because then you basically compete over your diagnosis.
00:04:24- There has to be a psychological cost of growing up
00:04:26with a front facing camera 24/7 as well.
00:04:28- Yes.
00:04:29- Right, there was a Zoom face
00:04:32that people had during lockdown.
00:04:33- Snapchat dysmorphia as well.
00:04:35- Where people want to get surgery
00:04:37and to look like their filter.
00:04:41They don't like seeing themselves without their filter.
00:04:44- Yeah, so you have girls who are using,
00:04:46did you know about Facetune?
00:04:48'Cause I swear no young men even know what it is.
00:04:51You don't know?
00:04:52- What's Facetune?
00:04:54- See, that's great.
00:04:55So Facetune is like one of the most popular apps
00:04:58where girls would edit themselves to then post on Instagram.
00:05:02- Like filters?
00:05:03- No, going in and editing each part of your face.
00:05:07So you can slim your jaw, you can enlarge your eyes,
00:05:09you can change your waist, you can tan your skin,
00:05:11you can whiten your teeth, it's everything.
00:05:13But that is what girls were using as teenagers
00:05:17all throughout growing up.
00:05:22And then they've reached their 20s and people say,
00:05:24oh, why are they unhappy with the way they look?
00:05:25Why do they have body dysmorphia?
00:05:27And they're using this app where you change yourself
00:05:30and then there's like an undo button,
00:05:32which if you click it, you look horrifying
00:05:34because then it reverts back to how you actually look.
00:05:37But you had girls doing that
00:05:38during the most formative years of their life
00:05:42and then trying to adjust to how they actually look.
00:05:45- How does the self-love messaging co-exist
00:05:49with record levels of body dissatisfaction?
00:05:52- Yeah, that's another paradox.
00:05:54I think because it's a marketing strategy.
00:05:59It's much like mental health awareness.
00:06:03A lot of that was a marketing strategy.
00:06:06The self-love campaign was basically
00:06:09ways to sell things like editing apps.
00:06:11So Facetune was marketed as something
00:06:15that can help you feel confident and empowered.
00:06:17And I talk about these influencers in the book
00:06:19who are literally, they're literally talking about
00:06:23how they don't have any insecurities anymore
00:06:26and they've overcome it.
00:06:27And they finally reached a stage of self-love
00:06:29while they're literally reshaping their jaw on Facetune,
00:06:32teaching girls how to do it.
00:06:35And none of the comments are calling that out
00:06:37or thinking it's hypocritical.
00:06:39- Why?
00:06:41- Because I think it's been drilled into us
00:06:43that these things are self-love.
00:06:46And so a lot of the time in the book I talk about
00:06:49recognizing what are you actually being sold
00:06:52versus what you're being told.
00:06:53Because you're constantly being told you feel this way
00:06:56and that this app or technology or trend
00:06:59will make you feel this way, even though it's not.
00:07:02So I don't know any young woman
00:07:04that would Facetune herself and feel good.
00:07:08Feel good doing it rather than feel embarrassed
00:07:11and a bit ashamed and feel worse about themselves after.
00:07:15- You know, I think the same thing happened
00:07:16with the Pick Up Artist movement.
00:07:17So what guys that did it learned was just how much
00:07:22they had to contort themselves
00:07:25in order to get laid with a woman.
00:07:27And even if it was effective,
00:07:30what they felt was the delta between who they were normally
00:07:32and who they were when they deployed the game by Neil Strauss.
00:07:35And that gap made the normal version of them
00:07:39feel even more disgusting, even more unwanted.
00:07:42Look at how much I've got to disguise and pervert myself
00:07:46in an attempt to try.
00:07:47Did you see the midget fight outside?
00:07:48Let's go to three other bars
00:07:49so that I can neurolinguistically program
00:07:52hack the back of your brain
00:07:53into coming to bed with me tonight.
00:07:54You go, I have to jump through all of these hoops.
00:07:57And this is where,
00:07:58so for the guys that it was successful for,
00:08:00if you don't do too much self-investigation,
00:08:03hurray, you did a thing.
00:08:06But if you do a bit more self-investigation,
00:08:07it's pretty, it can be pretty dark.
00:08:10And for the guys that did it and it didn't work,
00:08:13even with the best tactics in the world,
00:08:16I still can't make myself into someone that woman wants.
00:08:19Yes.
00:08:21Neither of those are good outcomes.
00:08:22Yeah, it's the same,
00:08:24that's so similar to the beauty stuff for women,
00:08:26which is that it can maybe get you
00:08:29what you want superficially.
00:08:31So you face tune yourself and you get 200 likes
00:08:34on your Instagram post,
00:08:36but then it's a momentary bit of dopamine.
00:08:40But then after that, you're now hooked on the app.
00:08:43You need to keep using it.
00:08:44You need the constant. And ugly.
00:08:45Yeah, and then you develop,
00:08:48which is what happened to me
00:08:48and a lot of girls I know,
00:08:50which was then having an aversion
00:08:52to having your pitch taken naturally
00:08:55because you're so used to controlling it.
00:08:56So girls in my friendship group
00:08:58would fight over whose phone the picture would be taken on.
00:09:01So that they could go in and face tune themselves.
00:09:03They've got the control.
00:09:04Wow.
00:09:05And so then-
00:09:05Wow, that is fucking insane.
00:09:08Yeah, because it feels so out of control.
00:09:10And then also that explains a lot of, I think,
00:09:12social anxiety because being in the real world
00:09:16is out of control.
00:09:17You can't control your appearance.
00:09:18You can't edit what you're saying or rehearse it.
00:09:21And so I think a lot of these apps
00:09:22actually then stunted us in real life because it feels so-
00:09:26You know what was interesting?
00:09:27I was on Long Island, August of last year,
00:09:32good weather, sunset.
00:09:34And there was a group of young teenage girls
00:09:37that were taking photos.
00:09:38And I noticed that if it was really perfectly put together,
00:09:41I mean, they must've taken, I'm not kidding.
00:09:43It must've been hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of photos.
00:09:46I get it.
00:09:47You want a nice new profile picture, whatever.
00:09:48Like, is it a bit silly?
00:09:49Yeah, but whatever, it's fine.
00:09:51The other thing that was interesting was
00:09:52if they were snapping as they walked,
00:09:54because they'd stayed in the same area
00:09:56that was going to have the best sunset,
00:09:58which is where everybody was eating ice cream or whatever.
00:10:01And if someone was sort of snapping away more naturally,
00:10:04more candidly, immediately all of their hands
00:10:07went up to their face.
00:10:08Have you seen this trend where girls sort of do this?
00:10:10So they'll pose with their body,
00:10:12but cover their face with their hand.
00:10:14And again, like I'm trying to get it.
00:10:18I'm trying to not chromogenally point a finger
00:10:21at someone that's 20 years younger than me and go,
00:10:25these kids, okay, so what is it that they're feeling?
00:10:28Why are they doing this thing?
00:10:29What's the best interpretation of this?
00:10:31Like it's a cutesy little,
00:10:33but it wasn't a Marilyn Monroe shocked,
00:10:36open mouth sort of face.
00:10:39It was, I just need to do this.
00:10:41It was like the scene out of "Four Lions"
00:10:43where he's trying to stop the fucking CCTV from watching him.
00:10:46It's another paradox where we're vain and insecure
00:10:50at the same time, but there's context to it
00:10:52because I grew up with the dog ear filter on Snapchat.
00:10:56Please tell me you know what that is.
00:10:57I've seen that one.
00:10:58And I remember the,
00:10:59do you remember the face mask that was bees?
00:11:02No.
00:11:03So you know like the face mask
00:11:04that you're used to having COVID?
00:11:05Yeah.
00:11:06That very quickly became like an object of oppression
00:11:10or something that didn't work or whatever.
00:11:12Yeah.
00:11:13I swear there was one,
00:11:14and people can tell me in the comments
00:11:15whether or not I'm fucking hallucinating this.
00:11:17I swear that there was one that was yellow and had bees.
00:11:21Jared, Google, was there a Snapchat filter
00:11:26of a face mask with bees?
00:11:29I swear, I'm fucking not hallucinating.
00:11:30But I remember the dog one.
00:11:31And then if you opened your mouth,
00:11:33it did a licking thing, right?
00:11:34Yes.
00:11:35But the dog one-
00:11:36Made people want to be dogs.
00:11:39No, but it beautified you as well.
00:11:41So it would like enlarge your eyes and smooth your skin.
00:11:45And so you had 13 year olds using it 'cause it was cute,
00:11:48but then suddenly hating the normal pictures themselves
00:11:51and not knowing why.
00:11:52And it's 'cause it was subtly changing your face.
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