Last June, my daughter asked me for a mini-fridge for her room. Not a Mercredi poster, not a cotton ball, not a Charlotte Cardin album, no, a real fridge… Why? To store her beauty products. Mthe O has just turned eleven. As for wrinkles and fine lines, I think she can still tolerate them very well… An influencer put the idea in her head. Until now, I didn’t panic too much about these virtual “influences”, but I did warn her about the uselessness of having more little pots of cream than her mother at her age. However, last week, while grabbing one of her thighs, she asked me if it was possible to have some fat removed. I fell off my chair. Of course, I suspected where she got this obsession from.
Beauty influencers, not all of them, but those who push the envelope a little too far, could they not salute the diversity of bodies and the courage to be oneself rather than praising large breasts, luscious lips, rounded buttocks, wasp waists or thin legs. Mthe I would also like me to swap my SPF 50 sunscreen for one with an index of 5 to promote a tanned complexion like that of another great Simone de Beauvoir of social networks… Sorry for the irony, I can’t help it.
In Formattinga book that I recommend, Mikella Nicol highlights the paradoxes present in the discourse of these online “influential” people: “Like their decor, which becomes more beautiful over the years, sometimes even from one video to the next, influencers are always more “beautiful”. Their entire staging evolves, becomes more polished and uniform. Their channels form a coherent system of images, their appearance cannot escape the scenography. My trainers look more and more alike, like the studios in which they move. And the speeches of self-acceptance that they utter are consequently falling into disuse. So why do I listen to them?” The time when “influencers” were our aunts whose hairstyle or choice of perfume we wanted to imitate is well and truly over. Today’s influencers operate with impunity, even going so far as to give the name of the aesthetic medicine clinic they frequent.
On their social networks, they erase, delete, blur so that the marks of life disappear, to live outside of time and the world. Imagine when, in addition, the creatures who embody these ideals are women generated by artificial intelligence (AI). Miss AI, a new beauty contest for virtual models, has just crowned Kenza Layli, its first Miss Artificial Intelligence. We have reached that point on the absurdity side.
I was shaken by the tragic death in Morocco in 2022 of 26-year-old Quebecer Florence McConnell, after liposuction that was supposed to give her the body she dreamed of, which would allow her to become an influencer. Since last summer, in France, there has been a law prohibiting the promotion of aesthetic procedures — including surgery — under penalty of two years in prison or a hefty fine. When will such regulations be introduced here too, even if, in my opinion, the first solution is still education. It’s still crazy that we’re still hammering home the same point for so many years. Even more pernicious and underhanded, given the accessibility of these messages that used to be conveyed through magazines, which had to be purchased.
Because one guilt does not wait for another, I wondered if Mthe O could have caught me judging myself harshly, wanting to make changes to my appearance or grimacing in the mirror because of dark circles, wrinkles or the appearance of a new white hair. No doubt. I am not immune to it either. However, I have the perspective and maturity of a woman who reads and informs herself.
I think back to Nelly Arcan, who highlighted these desires for perfection, to ultimately be chosen, to shine in the eye of the other, a man, most of the time. Obsessions that become obstacles to feminist thought, to the freedom of women to exist, without carrying a burden of superficialities which, in addition, leave less time to enjoy the real world; to have fun, laugh, play, read, learn… “A woman is to be beautiful. Even when playing hopscotch, even when mating, even when giving birth, it is always to be beautiful. It is an atrocious fate because beauty is safe from all revolutions. To be free, one must make a revolution. Women will never be free.”, writes the writer in Burqa of fleshpublished posthumously in 2011.
Arcan was right without even knowing that the worst was yet to come. Beauty is safe from all revolutions because it is now an integral part of them through increasingly sophisticated technologies on the Internet by glorifying the impossible. I am tired of making these observations and I wish we could spare the next generations.