Insecurity makes you prettier: what's behind beauty on social media?

She embodies all the contradictions of modern feminism: she's a successful businesswoman, a self-sufficient mother, unmarried, and has built an empire thanks to her image. Quite a girlbossAnd yet, her feminism neither questions nor criticizes the patriarchy; it simply aspires to have it all. She is the model and influencer Kylie Jenner, one of many who have triumphed on social media by showcasing such a high level of beauty and perfection, has only strengthened the system from which so many women try to escape. A patriarchal beauty standard that is becoming increasingly strict, but which disguises itself as female empowerment.

At least, this is what Ellen Atlantis criticizes in her book. Virtual Diva (Deusto, 2025), where the British journalist dissects the business of the influencers as a symptom of what millions of girls and women experience today, compelled to admire and imitate this type of content.

In fact, she herself confesses that for a decade she has participated personally and professionally in this system, consulting for cosmetic brands like BeautyCon and Estée Lauder, which is why she decided to write this book. "I wanted to understand my own complicity, how I've worked in a world that trains women to be visible and desirable, while silently eroding them," she explains.

For her, it's difficult to emerge unscathed from this virtual world: "Even when you can intellectually critique the system, you're still emotionally shaped by it," says the author, who attempts in the book to "map the trap from within." A trap in which our faith in beauty becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy: once we believe it's the primary currency in society, the more we seek to legitimize our aesthetic endeavors, and unwittingly, the more we reinforce the system that fosters it.

Virtual Experiment

Numerous studies show that the more followers women have on social media, the greater the pressure they face to be attractive. "And the more successful they are, the worse they see themselves. It's a vicious cycle that's very difficult to break," she asserts. This is a phenomenon that particularly affects millennial and Gen Z women, the first generations to be exposed to digital culture on such a massive scale. "They've grown up in a social experiment, surrounded by thousands of photos and countless people to compare themselves to," laments the author, who highlights a study conducted in the 2010s that claimed rates of depression, anxiety, and self-harm skyrocketed as a result of the rise of social media. According to Atlanta, being a young person today means navigating two paradoxes: "It's feeling bothered by images on social media while simultaneously consuming and obsessively recreating the same content," she laments.

The reality is that social media exploits something natural—the desire to be seen—and weaponizes it. "The platforms are built to reward visibility, but only a certain kind. They promise connection, but their algorithms thrive on comparison. For girls and women, that means every post becomes a performance and a test: how much validation can your body buy you?" she reflects. Social media turns self-expression into self-monitoring. "It's a kind of digital patriarchy: invisible, addictive, and disguised as empowerment," the author warns. Even sociologist Ben Agger described sexy selfies as "the male gaze made viral."

On the other hand, in the mid-nineties, surveys indicated that 83% of teenage girls read fashion magazines for an average of four hours a week, and magazines like Seventeen They had an estimated audience of eleven million readers. Nothing like the astronomical numbers of followers they have today. influencers Like the Kardashians. "Now, instead of reading a thirty-page monthly or weekly magazine, we can get the same content in just one hour," the expert continues.

Hybrid Beauty

According to Atlanta, the globalization of social media has also created a new transcultural ideal of beauty: "The ideal has become more 'inclusive,' but also more impossible. It's a kind of globalized face that takes features from multiple ethnicities without belonging to any of them. It's marketed as diversity, but in reality, it's a hybrid: fleshy, high cheekbones, tanned skin, but not too much. All of this doesn't free any woman from the need to improve herself, and that's every capitalist's dream," she points out. In this sense, technology has accelerated this process thanks to filters and image editing apps, which contribute to erasing cultural nuances and local beauty standards. The result is that everyone, everywhere, is pursuing the same face: a digital archetype that doesn't exist offline. The use of filters is increasing, but paradoxically, Atlanta asserts that today there's an illusion that people edit photos less than before. "The difference is that they do it more meticulously. It's the equivalent of a messy bun: you can spend hours trying to create something that looks natural and carefree," she points out. "At least in 2016, it was very noticeable when photos were edited, but not anymore. Our brains are finding it increasingly difficult to distinguish between casual images and those that have a whole production process behind them," she warns.

Raising awareness

Having seen the current situation, one might wonder how we can fight against this dictatorship of internet filters and the pursuit of image perfection. "First of all, by recognizing that filters are not just tools, but ideologies: they teach us to see ourselves as erasers, always in need of correction," Atlanta points out. The fight, in her view, is not about shaming the people who use them, but about questioning the culture that makes modification seem obligatory.

Therefore, she proposes that, individually, we perform small acts of rejection against this system, such as posting unfiltered images and speaking honestly about reality. At a collective level, the author also proposes demanding transparency from platforms and advertisers: mandatory labeling of altered content and visibility for all types of unretouched bodies. "Every time we show an unedited face, every time we choose presence over perfection, we reintroduce something radical into the feed"Reality," she emphasizes.

On the other hand, the author reminds us that online empowerment is not about performance, but about conscious participation. "The feminist act is to remain conscious within the digital world. It is to post without being possessed by the need for approval or turning your beliefs into a brand," she continues. In other words, it is about rejecting the idea that visibility equals value. The goal is not to transcend the system, but to stay awake within it. Similarly, life outside of social media is just as important. "Spend time with people who don't mind your space, where you feel your body is an instrument, not an ornament or content," she clarifies. "Where the system doesn't," she concludes.