Life Uncut - AI Is Deciding What’s Beautiful Now… And We Helped Train It . Uncut with Carly Söda

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Beauty standards are a set of rules and guidelines that we’ve spoken about hundreds of times before. We live in a time where it feels hard to keep up with them. We’ve discussed how pretty privilege can quite literally make you more successful in your career, the halo effect and how people with more symmetrical faces are viewed as more trustworthy. But, today we are taking a deep dive into how much social media and AI have changed the way that we view ourselves and if they’re to blame for the impossible beauty ideals that we are expected to live up to! Today we’re joined by someone who has spent years studying the way beauty culture shapes us, pressures us, and sometimes totally warps how we see ourselves. Carly, or Carlz J Söda, is a photographer and a researcher and her thesis looks into how social media, AI, and beauty standards collide and what that collision is doing to our sense of self. We speak about: How we all seem to anticipate criticism that we might get for the way we look, and change ourselves before anyone else has the opportunity to criticise us The concept of ‘digital lateral surveillance’ - a theory of how we police each other  How facetune and photoshop have affected us psychologically Are we to blame for AI’s ‘beauty ideals?’ The cost of ‘beauty’ The Kardashians being victims of the beauty standards that they themselves perpetuate How the selfie camera distorts what you look like You can find more from Carlz at her instagram and her website   You can watch us on Youtube Find us on Instagram Join us on tiktok Or join the Facebook Discussion Group Hosted by Britt Hockley & Keeshia Pettit  Produced by Keeshia Pettit Video Produced by Vanessa Beckford Tell your mum, tell your dad, tell your dog, tell your friend and share the love because WE LOVE LOVE! XxSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi guys and welcome back to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm Brittany and I'm Keisha and we have a very special guest in studio today with shoes that look like they could be some kind of a weapon. Her fashion sense is on point and she has flown in for the interview. Now beauty standards is something we have spoken so much about in so many different variations on this podcast and it's something we're going to do a little bit of a deep dive in today. That's it. We've discussed how pretty privilege can quite literally make you more successful in your career, the halo effect, and how people with more symmetrical faces are actually viewed as being more trustworthy. That's funny because I have one eye that I think's a bit

smaller and I went to my Botox lady and I was like, what can you do for that? Can you like put that eye up? She's like, what do you mean? And I was like, well, they're not symmetrical. cool. I was like, I want this eye up. I think everyone has a slightly lazy eye, but I feel like our guest today will be able to tell us a bit more about that. About my lazy eye. Today we are taking a deep dive into how much social media and AI have changed the way that we view ourselves and if they're to blame for the impossible beauty ideals that we're expected to live up to. Today's guest has spent years studying the way that beauty culture shapes us, pressures us, and sometimes totally warps how we see ourselves. Carl's or Carl's J Soda, as you might know her on Instagram,

is a photographer and a researcher, and her thesis looks into how social media, AI, and beauty standards collide, and what that collision is doing to our sense of selves. So today we wanted to unpack how we got here, why beauty feels more policed than ever, and the fact that that policing might come from an unexpected place, somewhere that you don't expect for it to, and whether AI is actually to blame for the way that we criticize how we look. Carly, welcome to, or Carls, welcome to the podcast. Carly means it's very serious like Carly we're gonna have a chat it's like when you get full named when you get the double syllable and it's like Carly without yeah well Carls Carls we're

gonna get into how and why somebody decides to do a thesis in beauty standards because I do think that's fascinating but before that something far more important is your embarrassing moment I was thinking about this and I've got one and this is like my my chance to air it out and feel better about it so embarrassing story is my very first boyfriend it lasted three days very serious as you can tell. Oh, true, real love. Yeah, true, real love. And I was so mortified by this relationship that I had to immediately end it. And he came over to my house, you know, to hang out, whatever. How old were you? I would have been 14. Okay. So very serious. Yes. And he rocked up to my house. He drove all the way there because he was older than me because, you

know. Oh, yes. Important. 17. He rocked up, walked to the front door and I said to him, I can't do this. He's like, oh, why? And the words out of my mouth, it's not because you're ugly. I just don't want to do this. And I've never, ever been able to forgive myself for saying that. But did you say it's not because you're ugly because he is ugly? What was that comment? Is that why you didn't have a thesis in beauty standards? You can see where it all starts.

Living rent-free for decades. Every time I think about it, I'm like, what? Why? Why did I do this? And what happened? Was he all right? I broke his heart. Of course you did.

Bitch. He spent years and a lot of money on plastic surgery. But at least he knew it wasn't because he was ugly. If he ever hears this, I'm so sorry. I don't know why I said it. I don't know why that came out of my mouth, but I think about it far too often. I don't reckon he listens to this, so I think he's safe. So let's talk a little bit about who you are and how you got here from 14 and from like

crushing people's souls. You're a photographer. Yeah. What about that led you to do a thesis in beauty standards? You know, it's actually a lot simpler than you think. I have been photographing people you know for about 15 years commercially about 10 and it's predominantly women and not because I want to just that's just how it happened to be and I've noticed over the last 10 years and I kind of correlate this to also the rise and the proliferation of

social media is how that inner dialogue is now coming outwardly almost as like an apology before I take a photo and so when I started I was photographing athletes and these are people who just had the most amazing figures, you know, six pack, muscles, gorgeous. Like you and I would look at them and be like, body goals, right? And yet when they're in front of my lens, it was almost like they were apologizing for not being good enough. And I don't know where that came from. Do you think that maybe came from the fact that most athletes feel like they don't fit the beauty norms of what a model or somebody that's been photographed should look like? Yes and no, because I was in a very niche sort of sport. I was in CrossFit. So that was actually

seen as goals, right? So the big quads, the six pack and all that sort of stuff. And these are people who just predominantly wear active wear. So in their little circle, it was great. When you wear normal clothes, totally different. And what it was more so was like, they're not quite there enough. And it became very evident to me that people were more so worried about how they were going to be perceived online. And so before they'd even been judged, they were critiquing themselves so that they could anticipate the judgment that was going to come. And I've noticed that over the last 10 years getting progressively worse to the point where most of my clients I've worked with for like five, six years. And so I've photographed them two, three times a year for six years.

And I've seen their faces change. And that could be, you know, Botox and fillers. And it could also be the way that they hold themselves. And I've watched personalities change. And this also correlates to how big their following gets on social media. And I'm now seeing it's like people are putting on this veneer. There's this expectation that they're going to be judged. and as soon as I pull the lens out and focus it on someone, it's almost like this vulnerability exchange where I can see the real person behind is more timid and they're putting on this show for the perception of others

and who those others are, no one knows. Do you think that it was more so the case for women or did you see this kind of across any gender? I want to say it's both. Women, I mean, I photograph women more than men. Men are certainly aware of it but they also don't care. Like, I'll give you an example. I do a lot of corporate work and I'll go into say a corporate building and photograph a hundred

people. And, you know, there could be a mix of men and women, different ages and the older men couldn't care less, you know, whatever, take my photo, see you later. Some of the women, particularly the middle age women. So I'm talking like, you know, 40, 50s, they are probably the most, what I would interpret as insecure because they're very conscious of how they look. And it's also because now those women have grown up across two generations. They've grown up across a generation where we didn't have this comparison culture we didn't have the social media we weren't bombarded with it every day now they're in a generation where women that are 30 40 and 50 look 20 and 30 yeah so they're hyper aware of their age when 10 20 years ago that comparison

wasn't there it wasn't so in your face you talk about something called digital lateral surveillance which i had never heard about talk to us about what that is okay so this stems from a theory by a French philosopher called Michel Foucault. That was terrible French, but that's his name. Every French listener now is like, no, I'm doing a good job. Honestly, most of the academics I read were French, and I'm like, come on, guys, make it easy for me. Why is no one from Australia?

And so he had this theory around prison systems and surveillance, right? And so he looked at that from like a hierarchical structure. You have the warden at the top who's setting the tone, and then the prisoners understand what those parameters are, and then they behave accordingly. And so once you're under surveillance, you sort of change your behavior. You sort of self-police. And then this sort of extended out to more modern times where we now have what we call

digital lateral surveillance, where we're no longer looking at those hierarchical structures. We're looking laterally to our peers. And we are surveilling out of fear of what our peers are thinking and our peers are saying about us. Social media has made that so bad to the point where there is an expectation that, you know, your friends and family who are looking at you on social media you'll change your behavior and you're worried about what they'll be saying about the way you behave online so it's it's an altering of your of who you are at your core your behavior yeah possibly the way you present yourself in

terms of appearance and looks yeah for fear of judgment from peers and those around you and not even peers I guess now on social media it's strangers yeah absolutely so you're no longer looking at those sort of traditional hierarchies you're looking more to the centralized community Yeah. And is that seemed as a negative? Because I feel like there's got to be something to that. And I say that because, you know, I would digitally laterally surveil myself. There's heaps of things that I would want to do and say, but I wouldn't because it might hurt somebody's feelings or it might be misinterpreted the wrong way, or there might be a headline that clickbaits it and take me, you know, transforms into something it wasn't. But I feel like there

should be a certain level of monitoring of yourself on social media. That would be a more conscious way of doing it. So obviously all of us mind our P's and Q's, particularly if you're in a work setting or in a professional setting, you know, you're going to behave accordingly. This is more of a subconscious thing where you're altering the way you behave and the way you speak based on your internal dialogue. Without really knowing. Interesting. And that thing that you were talking about before about the anticipation of the criticism, do you think that that has only come about because of social media? Or do you think that we've kind of always had a level of, I guess, awareness of the

fact that we might be criticized for our behavior and it's just gotten worse? Well, I mean, biologically judgment serves as our fight or flight response, right? We are judgmental creatures because we need to determine whether something's a threat or not. So that is biologically hardwired into us. But now with modern life, we are exposed to more people daily than ever before. Think back to like, say, 50, 60 years ago, you had your local community and that was it.

So everyone kind of knew each other and you kind of knew enough about each other. Now you're exposed to the entire web and you're exposed to people on the other side of the planet that, you know, have no context for who you are. And will give you no benefit. No benefit. And, you know, regardless what you say and, you know, your entire life's history, no one is privy to that information. So they're assessing you on that exact moment in time.

And so what you have now when it comes to judgment, I think with the way social media is gamified, we are hyper aware of it more so than ever before. Interesting. There was a word that you wrote about. I'm not even sure if I'm going to pronounce this correctly. It was gynocticon. Gynocticon, yeah. Okay, what is it and how does it relate to beauty policing?

And is it a transformer? It could be. It has to do with our vagina. It sounds like a transformer. I just got the worst mental image. A transformer in your vagina? Who knows? In 2100 it could be, you know.

Who's to say what happens in the future? But, okay, so this is an extension of that same sort of idea. So Mikhail Foucault came up with the idea of that Panopticon, and that all stems from prison systems and surveillance. And then a feminist writer, Alison Winch, came up with Gynopticon, and what she's referring to is now the many women watching the many women. So rather than being surveilled by one authority figure, it's now a community of people who are all doing, you know,

that Spider-Man meme where everyone's pointing at each other? It's that. We're all sort of looking laterally at each other. and and making assessments and judgments accordingly but specifically for women women on women do you think that that would surprise a lot of people like i i imagine that i feel like a couple of years ago i would have kind of assumed that the harshest judgment would have come from men i always thought the harshest judgment comes from women think about how many times we've even made comments on the podcast about like when someone comes for you you go onto their page

laura said it many times whenever anyone's critiquing or criticizing her and her mothering or whatever it is, it's always women. And I don't know why. I'd love to know if you've done a deep dive into why. It comes from the idea of like a scarcity mindset when there was work and jobs and positions or we're just bred to feel jealous like we need to be at the top of the food chain. I don't know what it is.

It's tribal. It's inherent into us. Again, it comes back to, you know, you think to eons ago. None of us were around obviously, but what it was was figuring out your role and your space in your tribe. and so it became a place of hierarchy right and so you're looking and to see who's the best leader who's the best person to do this who's the best person to raise the kids whatever and so now in that modern manifestation women are looking at each other as either threats or allies and that

sounds like a really generalized way of looking at it and a little bit cynical but you just have to look back at your own careers and your own you know time in high school and have a think about how you've been treated by other women in times that felt unjust women can be incredibly critical of each other and certainly like I mean we can talk about the patriarchy in men because that is obviously an element of it but I think it does a real disservice to women if we don't look at how women behave to other women yeah and having said that when I say it's the majority women there are so many male trolls like that's not what it is about we're not trying to differentiate and and say that men are wonderful and women are the bitches. That's not it. But it would be remiss

of us not to take a deep dive into saying, okay, hey, why are women doing this? How much of our issues around beauty standards now do we blame on the patriarchy? Good question. And I mean, this might ruffle some feathers, but you know, the patriarchy exists. And the first thing I'll say is when we look at the industries, whether it's fashion, beauty, or, you know, the advertising industry, and we look at the higher chains of management, so, you know, mid tier to above to senior management CEOs and all that, it is still predominantly men. And we could say, why is that? Is there a glass ceiling? Well, we can't say it's because women aren't allowed because there are women CEOs and there are women in those positions. But predominantly, I think last time I looked at

the figures, it's about 64% of people in those industries are men. And yet that could be a host of reasons. It could be because women left to go be mothers, or it's also when you think about those positions, they're not overly creative roles. So when you get to CEO level, it's more spreadsheets and board meetings as opposed to hands-on front-facing creative sort of pursuits and so those roles don't necessarily appeal to some people so that could be one way of looking at objectively others might might interpret it as like it's sexism you know it's a subjective way of sort of simplifying a very complicated issue so patriarchy exists in who's determining what's trendy what goes out what gets put into advertising what actresses are cast in roles all that sort of

stuff. But further than that, you've got to look at what social media has done. Social media is one of the most lucrative industries we have now. And it's decentralized the entertainment industry, really. Social media is entertainment. So whereas, you know, cast back your mind to 20, 30 years ago, where we would have had men in those big roles of advertising, executive, creative director, magazine editor, they're determining what goes into the small amount of entertainment we consume. now with the decentralization of socials women are posting content all day every day and we have influencers and we're following entertainers on TikTok or Instagram and so we are consuming content that hasn't gone through these massive hierarchical structures no one's determining what

you post or I post or maybe some people are because of contracts but so when you look at patriarchy yes it's part of it absolutely and I'm not trying to minimize that but a big part of this now is on the individual and what we're posting and how we're showing up and how we're behaving It's one of the most interesting things that I read in your thesis. Actually, Britt, can I grab it from you for a sec? I just want to read a quote. Here's one I prepared earlier. Frisbee it.

Sorry, that's five years of work. Frisbee it across the board. That's a good frisbee. You had this quote in your thesis that I really had to sit and think about. I've actually thought about it for a couple of days since I read it. You said, AI didn't invent these ideals. It inherited them from us. Now, we're talking about social media and how much it's kind of changed

the way that we turn up online. But something I think there's a lot of conversation about at the moment is the fact that I think we've put a lot of blame on AI being like, you know, this is going to be terrible for diversity. It's got one ideal of what beauty looks like and every type of advertising that we're going to see that comes from AI is now going to look this one particular way. It's going to be probably a blonde or brunette white girl with blue eyes who's got a symmetrical face and that's all that we're going to deem as being beautiful. How much has this intersection of AI and social media created such a narrow beauty ideal? So people aren't going to like this because the reality is AI is not sentient. I know people like to cast it as the antagonist

in our stories. AI is just a mirror. It's data. Where does it get that data from? It gets it from us. So when we look at models or AI models, and it doesn't matter whether these are image generation models, their algorithms, they are trained on the data that we are voluntarily uploading to the internet. That data is generated by us. So if we're conflicted by what we're seeing AI produce, then we need to ask ourselves, why is that what we post? And so this is actually a really big conversation. And the more you roll it back, the more you realize, oh, we are complicit at an individual level. You know, it's very easy in this day and age to blame things that are external to us oh it's the patriarchy oh it's AI oh it's the social media giants but I do wonder

like what comes first the chicken or the egg because are we editing photos and projecting ourselves in a certain way because society has told us for decades that that is what is deemed as beautiful and then by us doing that AI is then learning from us but we only learn from society it's like a vicious loop yeah it is a loop and that's like a feedback loop kind of thing right And so to have one conversation, you need to be able to have conversations across all those spectrums because it's not one thing and you can't point to this definitive start. You know, when you think about 20, 30 years ago when editors at fashion magazines or advertising executives were determining who gets cast in the ads, what gets put in magazines, what's beautiful, there was a type. And, you know, especially in the early 2000s, you know, we had the super skinny era. Heroin chic.

Heroin chic, but then also the Victorian secret models. remember when it was at its peak and i'll never forget when they introduced the first plus size model she was a size 12 yeah she probably looked like me she was a size 12 looked phenomenal and they labeled her as a plus size and she's like i'm a she had to refer to herself as a plus i'll never forget that yeah it was quite young but when we talk about editing and i wonder how many people i would i would want to say almost every single woman now knows what face tuning is to some point do we have the data like what are people mainly editing with these apps yeah I mean it's pretty insidious and we've got to have that conversation we need to look back at photoshop and where this

all started so traditionally photoshop and those editing tools were gatekept by the industry and so all the editing that was done in fashion photos and in editorials and things like that was done by people firstly I was going to say qualified qualified is not right but they were industry trained and they were looking for certain things now one of my first jobs I don't want to throw my my employer under the bus was a men's magazine, not a smutty magazine, but a men's magazine, and my job was to make the waist smaller and make the boobs bigger. And you did that in Photoshop.

Isn't that crazy? It's just a standard. That's it. Cinch the waist, give her bigger boobs. What's crazy is I would have been early 20s and it didn't even occur to me that that was a bad thing. It didn't even cross my mind. Because it was a different time.

Yeah. It was so normal. I was like, yep, no worries. And so, you know, you had people who were trained how to use those tools. And I'm not defending it. I'm just saying, like, it was gatekept. What you had when Facetune and all of these editing apps started to come out, again, that decentralization, it put it in the hand of the user.

Now, are they of a sound mind to be able to self-edit? Probably no, especially a 14-year-old girl. Should she be there? When you think about it, you've got puppy fat, squishy cheeks and all that sort of stuff, and she's trying to give herself that whole buckle fat removal face. And so now that those editing apps are in the hands of the individual, there is no sort of like safeguards for how far they go. I used to edit my photos prior to Facetune because I, before I got veneers, I've got porcelain veneers. I had like a, what they call a peg lateral where

one of my teeth didn't grow correctly. And it looked like I had a hole and I was so self-conscious of it. I wouldn't smile, hated photos. And so any photo that I took of myself, I'd go into Photoshop and I'd add the tooth in. And you could say like, oh, that's somewhat innocent. I can see why you can sort of justify it. But is that the same as someone who goes, I don't want to have a single crinkle on my face. I want to make my jawline slimmer. I don't want small boobs. I don't want a small butt or whatever it is. So where is that line? Because when I'm taking photos of someone in a commercial capacity, there's an expectation on me as a professional to give them the best photo of themselves. And this is where, this is where I went down this research road because I

was seeing it getting worse and worse and worse. And it used to be like, oh, can you just get that pimple out? Of course, of course. I don't want to immortalize your pimple. We don't need to do that. but when it came down to something in mature women that I get asked all the time is they call it turkey neck so as we age I mean I'm starting to get it I'm almost 40 you know the skin around your neck starts to loosen a bit and people are like oh can you just get my turkey neck yeah it's literally aging yeah and I'm like would you like me to erase you sure I mean can I do it yes should I do it and it got to a point where as a commercial photographer you know you want your clients to be happy I don't want to give you a photo and you'd be like oh that's shit I think that yeah and it's

a big problem if you start editing without their permission or consent it's so funny because you think that those times are gone as a whole except for obviously people like the Kardashians and the big people that you know always going to edit but I don't know if you guys saw this it made me laugh so hard at the time of this recording this happened like three days ago so this was probably about a month ago in real time but you guys can look it up if you want I'll show you guys this picture Neil Patrick Harris who we all know and love he has called out his fellow cast member Abby Lee Miller because she posted a photo of them, a selfie she took, and he is so fucking ridiculously edited that it looks satirical.

Do you guys remember when Coach Jenna also did this with Gordon Ramsay? Yes. I remember this. And it was so bad. Look at that. She has edited. He's lost his eyes. He's lost anything.

It's AI does a better job. AI does a better job. And he literally wrote, what have you done to my face? like elise is honest i appreciate that the thing i find interesting about this is that when it's done badly it's obvious yeah but when it's not done badly i think even us looking at certain photos i think we would still struggle to see when things have been edited but the problem with this is the fact that she has done this and thinks it's okay i was gonna say is she an older lady i'm not familiar with her so she's 60 and he's 52 do you know what's crazy kylie i actually

reckon you would know her it's just that you don't recognize her in that photo because she's edited her face so much a different person I think that's the point but the thing is what is wild to me is the fact that she's uploaded that thinking it's okay which means what has become normal to her has drifted it's like it's like a dose creep well you know it's easy for us to sort of look at that and have a giggle and on a surface level you sort of go oh how ridiculous but it's actually a lot more insidious than that when you start to peel it back I start asking what is going on in her mind that firstly she edited it to that degree and then firstly thought it was passable enough that she'd post it again this is all sort of subconscious I think we are aware of it in many

ways we know about the patriarchy we know about beauty standards and you know we all feel it to some degree but this is more of a subconscious thing like oh you know no one will notice if I just swipe on Paris right no one will notice if I just do that little thing I love Paris I'll say that i love paris on a bad day a lot of these things seem innocent but when you start to compound them over time especially like the the worst thing was the beauty filters because they're augmentation what's the one on tiktok it's called bold glamour i don't use tiktok so i don't know okay this went viral for a while and it was like a filter that basically shaved your jawline and gave you that eurocentric instagram face right you know the big cat-like eyes the makeup the

book of flat removal cheeks and all that sort of stuff. And everyone was using it and like influence it. And they were doing it out of irony, like, oh, look, you know, this is what I look like. Oh, you know, what a scare when they turn the filter off. But even under that, when you look at the subtext of that, they're showing you that because they want that. And then they're like, oh, wow, I look so underwhelming when I take the filter off. I'm like, no, you actually look human and you look more beautiful that way. But. And then the problem is we forget what human looks like we forget what a 30 year old woman should look like a 40 year old woman should look like because those ideals don't exist anymore like nobody can put their finger on and also I don't

know how this is happening but it's reversing like 40 50 year old women are looking 30 and 16 year olds are looking 30 I'm like the math ain't mathin like what's happening here do you know what's really awful about this is this is a part of my study I didn't get into and this is what I'm gonna do next is looking at the economic cost of beauty for women right and so when you have a think about it. If you've got all your people in your forties and fifties now going and getting their three monthly Botox and fillers, no shame either way, if that's what you're doing, great. But now it's like, okay, so that section of the market's been tapped into. What other markets can we branch into? Ah, preventative Botox. If you're not getting Botox when you're 20, you will get

the line. So you better get it now. I've had Botox once in my life and I hated it. I hated that like concrete feeling. I'm almost, well, by the time this airs, I'll be 40. I don't think I look 40. I've never had preventative Botox, but young girls now, thanks to TikTok and Instagram are being told that you do need it so that you don't age. You know, you think about the cost of this financially. And last time I looked at the figures, Dove did a really good survey. And I mean, surveys are always really subjective. Are people being honest? You know, so does it take it with a grain of salt? But essentially the average Australian spends $500 per month on beauty things. So that could be shampoo, conditioner, sunscreen, and also makeup, Botox, skincare.

That's the average. So there's going to be people on the higher side. There's going to be people on the lower side. I think if you put hair into that category as well, as in like bleaching and that kind of thing, I think mine would easily blow out well over that. Hair is wild now, especially if you're blonde. Yeah. And so you think about that, that's almost $6,000, $7,000 per year. Add that up over the 30, 40 years of your life when you're really the most self-conscious and the most aware of how you look, that's an extraordinary amount of money that you are putting on these things. And are you doing it because it's self-expression

and creative expression? Certainly there's an element of that. That's what I would call fashion for me. But then when you look at the other side of it, is it the preventative Botox and all the nine-step skincare regimes and now the nighttime regimes and the morning regimes, the more we're told to consume, consume, consume, this is actually impacting our ability

to set up a life for ourselves because all of our money is being funneled over into this one direction. And I don't judge people who do any of that stuff. It's more so just think about why you're doing it. Are you doing it because you want to? If so, awesome. Are you doing it because of the expectation? Maybe we need to stop and have a think about it.

I'd love to just circle back to this. You were talking about this AI filters that kind of, I feel like it was about two years ago, they really took over social media. And I used to use them on Instagram. And then remember when it came up, if you posted a story with it, it started saying when you had used one and that was when I stopped doing it because I was like,

that's really embarrassing. Like I don't want people to know that. How did AI know that that's what we wanted changed about our faces? So it's based on data. So again, AI doesn't have opposable thumbs. AI is not doing it. We are training it to do that. So if someone's coming up with one of those augmentation filters that go up to Instagram or TikTok, what they're doing is they're taking a set of data and they're going, all right, so I'm going to put a mask over this person's face, like the shape of a face. And when it sits on a human's face, it's going to bring the jawline in, or it's going to make the eyes bigger. That's based on what we're telling people we find attractive. And so at the end of the day, social media companies are in the business of data.

That's how they make their money. That data is so valuable. So seeing what you like, seeing what you comment on, seeing what you share and you send to people, that's how the algorithm works, right? It's based on your data and it feeds you more of that. There's also those apps where you can change your hair and what wigs you've got and you can put those filters on. It seems innocent. And it's fun, but they take your data. Yeah, 100% they do.

And so what they're doing on the back end is they're grabbing all that data, they're collating it and going, okay, so this is objectively what the data says that people find attractive. So we're going to make filters that do that. When filters started becoming a thing on Instagram, I used them because I thought the colors were cool. I loved it. Do like the vintage tone and there'd be a bit of grain and a vignette and all that sort of stuff.

I'm like, oh, that's cool. But do you think because I still use filters as in I don't use filters, any filters that change me, but I use color filters to make a photo maybe look older or I love that kind of stuff. But I see that more as more creative and artsy. Like that's not editing me, but it's maybe like making something darker, less bright, grainy, whatever. Do you think there's a problem with that? No, not at all. I mean, I'm a photographer. I do half of my work is in the editing suite.

And I think that's a creative expression. And so when it comes to this conversation, you can't demonize one thing and go, okay, that's the definitive line. Once we go to that point, it's bad. It's very subjective and there are gray areas, but it's more so having an awareness because a lot of this is autonomous now. People are doing it out of like instinct. Oh yeah, I've got to do that.

I better change that, you know, and it's becomes like a social contagion and that's that feedback loop. Oh, everyone else is doing it. Oh, I don't want to, I don't want to not do it. So maybe, you know, I'll do it too. you actually wrote about Khloe Kardashian and this thing called the Streisand effect in your thesis can you explain for us what that is yeah so you guys might remember this because it was a really big thing and I have a real when I say love-hate relationship with the Kardashians I'm

utterly fascinated by them so am I fascinated they are there's no other word for them than fascinating and I did watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians in the early years and then you know now with this monster like empire that they've built I just can't look away it's like a car accident right you're just like I'm so curious and so 2020 you've got to think we're all locked in our homes it was lockdown era Chloe posted oh sorry someone posted a photo of Chloe I think it was her team because they don't just manage their own socials and it was just a photo of her in a bikini it was a snapshot and it went up online and if she hadn't said anything none of us would have made anything of it it was just her in a bikini it was a raw photo unedited yeah which

they never never do or unedited and she looks great you know as far as like a woman in her was she 40? She had the leopard bikini on. She looked phenomenal. She looked great. Yeah, but very different to what they usually upload. Unedited, no color grading, and also no retouching. And so she freaked out and demanded as many places as possible get it taken off the internet. And when you do that, that just starts a wildfire. Because as soon as you go, oh, you can't see this, everyone wants to see it. It creates scarcity around it. And that's the Streisand effect. This stems from Barbara Streisand, who had a beachfront property, and the paparazzi one day hide a helicopter and they went and photographed it. And same thing. She tried to get it scrubbed

off the internet, which made people only more curious. People prior to that probably didn't care. And same with this photo of Chloe in a bikini. She posts like a hundred photos a day. No one would have thought much about it because she made it a big deal. Then everyone else was like, well, now I need to know. But what's worse than that? That was the bikini thing. A few months later, you guys might remember this infamous selfie that she posted where she was unrecognizable, utterly unrecognizable. And like the closer you look at it, you realize how much of herself she'd edited, like half of her necklace was missing and her nose was like pencil thin and her jaw was really angular.

It just looked nothing like her. She almost looked like a Bratstall version of her. And, you know, we can mock that and go, oh, my God, who are you trying to fool? We're not fooled. But I would go one further than that, go, hang on, this woman has the resources of an empire. They are worth billions collectively and she doesn't need

to prove herself, yet she still thought she had to go to that extreme to be able to post a photo of herself for Instagram. What is going on in her mind? That's what I was curious about. And then I guess that circles back to what we spoke about earlier, the digital lateral surveillance. And I'd love you to talk me through how somebody like Khloe Kardashian can be and is simultaneously a victim and an enforcer. Yeah, that's exactly it. She is the victim of the beauty standards that they themselves perpetuate. And the problem is like a lot of this stuff is unsustainable. So you think about Chloe's the most fascinating to me because she was referred to the words of the media not mine the ugly sister right and you think about how much criticism she has caught

also imagine growing up with that when you were labeled the ugly sister from like 16 by the whole world and she's overweight but Chloe's like 5'10 Kim's 5'4 she in her family she's a bigger woman just literally like in height and so you know the ugly sister and Kim got all the attention so that's already competitive in the family and that family dynamic. Exacerbate that by paparazzi in Hollywood and then by the world and social media to be judged at that level. Like you imagine what that weight is like on your shoulders. And so whilst they're going out of their way to look better so that when the paparazzi snap them, they don't get these uncomfortable, awful, awkward images. They're sort of preempting that and going, okay, so when the flash goes off in

my face, it's going to get my pores and make me look terrible. I'm now going to do preventative makeup so that I look better in the flash. Cool. Okay. That's step one. I'm going to make sure I dress better. Cool. That's step two. Now I'm going to pay the paparazzi to get the photos edited before they get published and I'll pay them on top of their fee that they're getting from the people publishing the photos. Which I think a lot of people don't know. And that is very fascinating in and of itself. The fact that when you look at almost any paparazzi photo of the Kardashians, they are all phenomenal. And that's not the case with other celebrities, but it's because they own the paparazzi they're on a retainer it's we'll give you what you want if you post what we want

smart business move it's it is and like I mean when you've got that kind of wealth you can do that wealth and power and status and so for Chloe like over the the last I think six or seven years she's definitely gone through this reinvention period she's lost a lot of weight she's gotten really fit and I feel I mean I'm looking at her as an observer so you know this isn't me as someone who knows her. But I would argue that a lot of that has come down from the expectations of others and wanting to no longer be known as the ugly sister. I want to be the fit sister. I want to be the glow up sister. You know, she's had a nose job and she's had a boob job and she's only just admitted that publicly, by the way. We speculated on it for years. And so when you look at someone

like Chloe posting photos of that, her family has industrialized beauty standards, but now they are a victim of that because they can't sustain it. So what happens? The beauty standard has to keep evolving. So for the last, what, six, seven years, it's been all about the BBL, right? The Brazilian butt lift, the big, curvaceous, voluptuous body, big boobs, big bum. But now what happens is that everyone got access to BBLs. Not saying that you should go do that, but it was available for the average person. So if the average person now has a BBL, it's no longer something aspirational because everyone has it so then what do you think about the idea that we have transparency around celebrities and what they're doing how they're looking like they are because on one hand you

want to applaud them and say it's beneficial for us to know that you weren't born like that you're not naturally like that you paid a lot of money for that so like I don't feel worse about myself or do you think it's perpetuating the beauty standards now by doing that and saying hey you too could go and spend fifty thousand dollars on your face and look like this like I don't know I can't tell if it's positive to have the transparency or if it's negative because it's making people say oh I can I know exactly what she did now now I can remortgage my house to go and do it both things can be true at once so it is that it becomes a social contagion like the one I'm fascinated in was the is the buccal buccal I think buccal buccal sorry I've been saying it

wrong buccal fat don't quote me on that I think just for anyone who doesn't know that if you kind of feel where your cheekbone is there's a pad of fat that naturally sits under everyone's face and as you age, it tends to decline and that's what can create jowling of the jaw. You can actually get that surgically removed. So it will give you a much more angular face. But what a lot of people are now experiencing is the fact that it has made them look older. Well, people are doing it not because it's aging and it's drooping. People are doing it to give them cheekbones and then they age, they end up aging quicker. Yeah. So they're doing it when they're young, when they still have sort of the puppy fat. And then as they age, you know, the skin drops because there's no fat there

to hold it up. You know, you look at that, that's a social contagion. We saw that with a host of celebrities and then it became accessible because now we have an entire industry built around tweakments, right? So these are non-surgical procedures. Well, that would be a surgical procedure, but you know, you can go in and get Botox fillers and all sorts of sort of non-surgical things done to your face in your lunch break. Salmon sperm. Salmon sperm. Oh my God. I keep hearing about this. I've done it. Yeah. Was it painful? No. No? Oh, I mean, it's the same as a botox needle okay but i i am i i'm happy to put my hand up and say i do a lot of tweakments that are non-surgical i'm always doing people all of our life as and listeners

know that i love skin i'm always doing a laser or a peel or but having said that i have a disposable income i don't have children and that's what i've chosen to spend my money on if it was if i had kids and i was really struggling to pay the bills or whatever else i'm not going to be prioritizing a laser on my skin over feeding my kids but that's a really healthy thing that you've you're you're aware of why you're doing it and I think that's the biggest part that like there's no definitive answer to how do we beat beauty standards or how do we stop them it's more so being consciously aware of why you're doing it why you're participating it and especially when it comes down to money right like you just said you have a disposable income that's awesome that's your

prerogative and that's your choice great that doesn't apply to someone who is not in the position, but then wants to save up and then ends up flying to Turkey or Thailand and getting these procedures that might be on the gray market. People talk about, oh, I was influenced or there's this expectation. Sure, that is part of it. But a lot of it is also the onus is on the individual. Why are you doing this? Why do you feel the need to go and do this? And if it's because you want to, then great. I've had plastic surgery. I had a full facial reconstruction. My face is half titanium. So nose job, maxi-o-facial top and bottom, and I also have porcelain veneers.

Now, mine was reconstructive, but, you know, talk about plastic surgery. I've spent over $100,000 on this face. But that sounds, and correct me if I'm wrong, that sounds like not something because you were like, I don't like the way I look, I'm going to change it. That sounds like something that you had to do. Well, there's two things. Yes, I had to do it, but also I hated how I look. But what I, and I went through this really young.

I had that surgery when I was 21. and growing up I always thought I was ugly and I knew once I had the surgery I'd be okay but then the reality was after that surgery yeah the goalpost shift I didn't think I looked any better and that was going to be my next question was with the inflation of beauty is it just a game of whack-a-mole are we going to be going our entire lives going and I think it actually gets worse once you start getting things done because you have this expectation that once you get that thing done you're going to be happy with how you look but I think something that a lot of us experience is that once we get one little thing done we then go oh I could then just quickly do

this little extra thing and like I wonder if we are ever going to get to the position where we go yeah I'm happy with the way that I look or if we are just consistently going to be going for the rest of our lives what's next what's next what's next in my opinion short answer no so long as we keep outsourcing our decisions to things external to us so what I mean by that is if you keep saying that I'm influenced, it's the patriarchy and I have to, sure, you will never be happy. But if you're like, I'm in the driver's seat, I'm looking at myself in the mirror, I will determine what I want and I'm happy, then that's a different conversation. But something to think about here, you guys know the story of Narcissus, the Greek myth, right? So for those who don't know,

Narcissus was the Greek god who was punished for teasing, was it Hedra? I can't remember, the nymph. And the Greek god made him fall in love or share his reflection and he fell in love with his reflection and he ended up dying of thirst because he didn't want to disturb the water to not see himself. So that's where the term narcissist comes from. I didn't know that. That's a good story. Yeah. It's a great mythology. I probably kind of ruined the story, but like, that's the story. No, I think you encapsulated it. We get the gist. Okay. So when you think of now, we were never meant to look at our reflections as much as we do today. You know, prior to the 1800s or maybe the 1700s, we didn't have access to mirrors like we do today. So this is a modern

thing. And prior to smartphones, you saw yourself in a window reflection walking past or in a bathroom mirror. You weren't carrying around your smartphone and staring at it, at yourself all day, every day. So a lot of this is also how frequently we've been exposed to our reflections. And also the selfie mirror, sorry, the selfie camera changes the way your face looks. And there's data that shows that people prefer selfies over photos that other people take because your smartphone selfie camera is actually a wider lens so it's changing the focal point of your face didn't know that it also reverses these and this is actually also there's been research done in this in terms of what you will find attractive you tend to find things attractive that mirror

what you're used to seeing so the more and more that you see something your brain creates patterns of what you're going to find attractive and I think what's really interesting about that is that if a selfie camera if we get so used to seeing our face in reverse do you remember there was a trend not that long ago where one of the filters that they created flipped the image if you've ever seen a photo of yourself and you have flipped it horizontally so like you see yourself from a different side that's how other people see you and it's really really weird to see the difference I think we have a bit of a different experience with it Brit because we have so much video footage of us that is taken from a non-selfie camera we can't edit ourselves because people

would know because our video footage is everywhere like don't get me wrong some days there's been days where I wish we could some days you're like why have I got 10 cheers it's like what was that angle but yeah and I feel really lucky about that like it's out there for who we are people know what we look like and it's it's fine it's normal it doesn't bother me like there's never been a time sometimes we look at the videos or the photo and we're like well we're having a bad day but Like it never has bothered us enough that we're like, we are not putting that anywhere. Like that's absolutely ridiculous.

Yeah. So Kylie, how much do you think that that selfie camera has actually changed our perception of ourselves? I would say if you wanted to talk about the whole chicken and egg thing, I would say that has a big part to do with it because when you're using that camera, you're taking photos of yourself at different angles that no one else normally sees.

Like you think about the odd selfie angle. It's always this, right? And it's always from one side of the face. Yeah, my left side is my better side. And I mean, I'm guilty of this. I only prefer this left side did you say Laura and I it's funny we have the you know how people have the same good side right we have the same good sides every time we do a shoot together we fight over this it's like the left side we have to fight over it and sometimes if sometimes we

stand like awkward family photo where we're facing the same direction and look at the camera it just doesn't work mine's an auto reflex I just do this now totally yeah but I mean that's just your preference and I'm I have a asymmetrical face too so whenever I look at myself front on I'm like why is that eye so much higher than the other? But I mean, as a photographer, everyone's face is like that. And so, you know, that's something I'm used to looking, I'm used to looking at faces, but when you are only seeing that one angle of yourself, firstly, it's the mirror angle and also the selfie cam where you're constantly pulling that angle. It's warping the way that you perceive yourself. So when someone else takes a photo of you and you look at you like,

oh my God, I do not look like that. Well, you do. It's just, it's unfamiliar to you because you can never look at yourself front on, right? It's also, you think of how many times like you get someone to take a photo of you I'll get Ben my husband to take a photo of me something and I'll be like Ben that is terrible he's like I just took a photo of you like that's just what you look like today he's like you know like he's not saying but it's true it's just like your immediate reaction to a photo that you don't like is like it couldn't possibly be that you look like that it's just like someone's taken a bad if that's a bad angle which it might be a bad angle but it's still what you look like well often those bad angles or those weird things that we screenshot

we're not meant to look at ourselves like that because we're in motion we're fluid so like if someone gets this bad angle of you that was never meant to be taken because you know like objectively that's not how we we look at each other so you know even looking at you right now if I took a photo of you on selfie camera and you could see all your pores you'd be like oh look at all these flaws but sitting from you guys you know two meters away I can't see your pores and we're not looking for it yeah thank you carly you're just saying that we're beautiful you are I think You know, the thing that I really sat and thought about after reading your entire thesis was, oh, I feel as though there's been a lot of conversation blaming AI for the fact that

we have these increasing and narrowing beauty ideals. What is something that we can individually do? Is it a matter of just going, okay, I'm no longer going to use Facetune. I'm no longer going to edit things that I don't see. Maybe I'm going to post a photo where I don't think it's as flattering as what other ones are what is an individual step that we can actually take to kind of try and stop this circus yeah good question did I send you guys the video I made for my exhibition because I speak about this I would say talk to your younger self imagine yourself as the five six year old right that innocent little girl running around doing whatever she's doing and imagine her watching you today doing all this stuff and go do I want her to learn to

do this you know and it's easier if you've got kids I don't have kids but if you've got a young daughter imagine her watching you you know erasing parts of yourself doing those tweakments doing all those things and is that something you want for her if you feel jarred by that sort of go oh okay so why am I doing it I think you know saying that we shouldn't do things or things should be banned I don't think that's the way to go it's more so have a conversation like if you want to do Botox good awesome no worries why are you doing it oh I just want to because I like it yeah but then I just think like if my daughter came to me in her 20s and said she wants Botox I'd be like no way yeah which is crazy because like I mean I did everyone in the 20s gets it now I shouldn't say

everyone a lot of people get it in the 20s it's a lot more normalized and I say not everyone because I know the last time we sat on the podcast or a lot of people that were like I don't get it which is fine but it's far more normalized but if my daughter came to me and said that she wanted to get it I would say no you don't need it you're beautiful yet I'm happy to go get it yeah so I would ask you not to psychoanalyze you from here but why do you think you need it oh I know why and it's so interesting because I started to unpack this when I was thinking about this episode because it's not something you ever think about right you're booking to get your Botox you make the jokes on the podcast whatever but you don't have to analyze it but when we were going to do

this episode I started to think about it and I used to make this joke all the time and then I'm sure I'm actually trying to wonder if it was a joke or if there was something to it. I used to say, oh, and not even just on camera and on the podcast to my friends, like the second I get a husband, I am letting myself go. Like, and it used to be like, ha ha ha. But I wonder how much truth there is that. I wonder if it's this idea of going back to like the tribal idea or survival of the fittest or whatever it is that I had to maintain a certain level of the way I looked in order to get a mate to live my life with because it is a fierce world out there and it's very competitive and I wonder if I did a really deep dive is there a part of me that was like oh I just

need to maintain a certain level of look so that I can get a mate for the rest of my life and then I'll let myself go and obviously I haven't let myself go yet but that is coming for sure but I think it's just the society we live in the industry we're in doesn't help like when you are in front of a camera all the time or you're on TV or whatever it is, there's definitely not an outward pressure, but a subconscious pressure. Yeah. It's almost a performance when you think about it. You know, what you're saying about getting a mate, you want to be the best version of yourself to attract that person for sure. And I think most people can relate to that. Then it comes down to where, oh, you know, if I, now that I've found my person, I can relax. It's like, well, why are we

running around in life? Unrelaxed, I guess you could say, wearing this veneer and performing to appeal to people to get that person to then only revolt back to what we were prior. Why are we not okay with who we are? Yeah, and I don't even know if it's being not okay with who we are. I would go a step further and say I wonder if it's because we do live in a world now where the grass is always greener and we have so much accessibility.

I think it loops back to what you were talking about much earlier in this chat of the fact that we anticipate criticism and it would be the same in the dating world. You would anticipate the way that someone's going to view you And so you want to put your best foot forward because you don't want to have your ego crushed. There's more than that though too. And you guys being in media, you would have been exposed to this. With the digital world now, we can be whoever we want to be in the digital world.

We can curate ourselves. So what selfies go up, what videos go up, what you say can all be curated in a way that you get to be this version of yourself that maybe you can't necessarily be in total in the physical world. Anyone can catfish anyone. Yeah. And you can, it's a performance, right? So you get to be this person that you've always aspired to be, that you fall short of in the

physical world. But further than that, particularly when you become a public figure, a celebrity or someone with a bit of social presence, you are now being judged by people who just don't like you. And there'll be people who just do not like you. And when you get exposed to that commentary, it will then make you start to self-police because you're like in the back of your mind, oh my God, they're going to say stuff about me in Reddit.

Oh no, this is going to go up on Tattle Life. Oh no, like, you know, the Daily Mail will do an article on me or something like that. And I've seen this with a lot of the clients that I work with. These are people with significant social media followings and don't bother going through my socials. I've made sure they're all hidden. You know, even that, like that comment, I've just self-policed myself because I'm like, oh shit, I've said something.

I instantly know there are going to be people that go, great, I'm going to go over there, grab it. And then shit, what she meant was this. And so we're constantly having to reprogram the way we speak, reprogram the way we show up because we're out of fear of someone taking things out of context or making an assumption based on something that they don't have the nuance to. And, you know, when you think about the way people behave in the comment threads and in snark forums and Reddit forums,

it's insidious, right? And if you got exposed to that commentary about yourself, it would change the way you show up online. And that's what a lot of celebrities used to have to go through but now public figures and social media influencers have the same thing. Also, women are just judged more than men. Yeah.

In every capacity, in your work capacity, online, social media, the way you parent, the way you wife, it doesn't matter what it is. often digitally and laterally. Ah, look at you go. Yeah, digitally, laterally, gynon, optically. What's that, ladies? The vagina robot. Do you ever see a world in where beauty standards widen again?

No, because you just have to. No, no, no. Just open a history book. You know, I mean, you think back to imperial China. They used to do foot binding. Oh, that's horrific. That was considered beautiful. Like that was a thing that was only stopped, I think,

at the turn of the last century. Like it was still a thing. So beauty standards are like water. they ebb and flow right so will they ever change yeah they change all the time will we be less beholden to them that's the conversation and I at the core of this I always try and bring it back to agency and free will yeah things can be happening externally but you get to determine whether or not you want to participate and what I really love about the way you do that is that you don't point the finger at the individual you just want them to have a little bit more awareness

of why they're making decisions and so I don't feel as though you're kind of like holding you know pointing a finger at me and going why did you filter this and why did you edit that just try and have some awareness of what factors led to you feeling as though you needed to that's what I really enjoy about the way you present this and it makes me question things in myself without feeling like you're judging me yeah and I always say that to clients when I'm photographing them I'm like why do you feel that's necessarily the case I mean I'm looking at you I think you're beautiful and I only want to take your best photo when we're looking at self-deprecation I think it also becomes impulsive it becomes a learned behavior and you just start doing it and you

start apologizing like oh you know oh my my big eye or like oh you know my skin or whatever it is that we have that perceived flaw when I get that fixed then things will be better and then you find a new one to fixate on if we can disrupt that internal dialogue and realize like there'll always be something new there'll always be something you can change there'll always be a new beauty standard there'll always be a new tweakment or something that you can do you get to determine when you want to get on and off that carousel. Well, for anyone who would love to learn a lot more from Carly, she has a podcast, she's got social media and her website. They will all be linked in our show notes for you. Thank you for having such an interesting and fascinating

lens on a conversation that, you know, I feel as though we have spoken about beauty standards, like I said, a hundred times before. I haven't had a lot of the words for the, you know, what we're experiencing the labels, but I also haven't kind of taken it that, that deeper understanding until, you know, I read your thesis and had this conversation and I'm really grateful for it. It's shifted the way that I think about things a lot. We've definitely never had somebody that's done a thesis on beauty standards on the podcast. Like we've given our own two cents, which is, you know, it's a league of its own, but thank you so much. And anyone that wants to go and have a look at your social media, I encourage people to go and have a look at your social media, which we have

linked in our show notes because you speak on a multitude of topics and you speak so well you dissect things so articulately and intellectually and there is definitely something to be learned you may find yourself hooked on her social media when you start scrolling thank you so much for coming on I'm sure at some point there is something else we can chat about here because I've thoroughly enjoyed talking to you thanks ladies it's been really nice to have a chat and it's nice to be able to chat openly without having to feel like you need a self-police to make sure you're saying the right thing so it's been good I do that in the edit yeah We police you

We post police you We've been making notes Thanks so much Carly