Lip filler. Botox. Microneedling. Face peels. Face lifts. Boob job. BBL. Lipo. Rhinoplasty. Genioplasty. Double eyelid surgery.

Hair highlights. Nails, both hands and feet. Brow tattoos. False eyelashes.

Shaving. Armpits, legs, arms, feet, vulva, ass. Microplaning peach fuzz. Nair. Threading. Waxing. Makeup. Foundation. Concealer. Brow pencil. Brow gel. Mascara. Eye shadow (glitter, cream, liquid, baked, stick). Blush (powder, cream, liquid, gel, tint). Primer. Setting powder. Setting spray. Color corrector. Bronzer (matte, cream, shimmer, stick). Contour (powder, cream, stick, liquid). Luminizer. Eyeliner (pencil, gel, liquid, felt-tip, cake). Eye primer. Eye shadow (too long of a list). Lip balm (tinted, medicated, SPF). Lip liner (pencil, twist-up, gel). Lipstick (cream, matte, satin, sheer, powder). Lip stain. Lip oil.

Have a fucking headache yet?

For some reason, many of these are prerequisites for attraction in the modern age. To achieve the beauty thrust in front of our eyeballs via doomscrolls or movie close ups. And yet, most men couldn’t spot filler–unless their girlfriend’s injections wore off. Well, straight men, at least.

As a wise person once said, you are not ugly, you are just poor. Attraction, or the standard of “conventional” beauty is among the most expensive it has ever been for women. In the United States, the beauty industry is worth 570 billion dollars (this is just for “beauty” btw, separately categorized from the fashion industry).

Don’t even get me started on fashion.

Okay, fine. I’ll dip a toe in:

Have enough outfits not to repeat too often.

Different ones for different occasions.

Learn color theory to make your skin/eyes/hair pop.

Don’t want to be washed out. God forbid!

Make sure you know how to dress for your body type, even if the only flattering fabric makes you boil in the summer.

And if you’re even slightly overweight? You better hide that shit.

The gym bro who was only going to use you for a quick fuck anyway wouldn’t want you if you didn’t.

I grow weary. Ever more resigned to the belief that this standard is not confined to adolescence. It transcends age groups, metastasizing across them.

The worst part, however, is the price character has to pay.

Energy, time, mental agony—poured into perfecting ourselves externally. Into grooming, smoothing, lifting, tinting, endlessly. And what do we lose in the process?

The development of character.

The pursuit of joy.

The hobbies that have nothing to do with health, fitness, or optimization.

We stop cultivating inner lives, not because we don’t want to, but because turning inward feels riskier than turning outward.

Outward is legible. Outward is rewarded.

Inward is quiet, complex, and often invisible, offering no reward, and often met with its antithesis.

Loneliness. Doubt. The ache of confronting who you are when no one’s watching. The grueling dedication to honest self-analysis and humility. The oftentimes isolating work of expanding the reaches of one’s personhood, not the meat sack that carries it.

The slow, unseen work of becoming someone deeper, not just someone prettier. The alienation that results from an appearance (or, in my view, façade)-obsessed culture.

We polish the surface until it gleams, and forget there was ever something underneath.