TED Talks Daily - How digital culture is reshaping our faces and bodies | Elise Hu (re-release)

Episode Date: September 9, 2025

As "beauty filters" proliferate on social media platforms like TikTok, journalist Elise Hu says we've entered the era of the technological gaze, where the digital world shapes real-world beauty standards. She explains how to navigate this new reality in all its forms — and why you should reject the idea that your appearance dictates your worth.This episode originally aired on January 27, 2025.For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore? Fizz is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at Fiz.C. Our homes are ready for any kind of cuts.

We have bandages, sprays, gels to treat them, but we're quick to ignore gum bleeding and inflammation. We brush it off, literally. Use Colgate periogard to significantly reduce gum bleeding and inflammation. It helps fight bacteria that can lead to early gum disease and improves gum health with daily use. So the next time your gums feel sensitive, don't ignore it. Help take care of it with Colgate Periogard. Healthy gums, confident smile.

This episode is sponsored by Airbnb. A few years ago, I went to Vancouver for work, and I remember sneaking in a little time to wander Granville Island and grab something from the public market. It reminded me how much I love discovering new corners of. Canada with Airbnb. Because let's be honest, when you're traveling with kids, sometimes you just need a kitchen at 6 a.m. That's one of the things I love about Airbnb. You actually get to settle in. We can have breakfast together around a table, put the kids to bed in real bedrooms, and still stay up with my partner after. That's the kind of setup that makes trips in Canada so much more fun. You're not just getting a place to sleep. You're getting experiences that feel authentically

yours, whether it's a lakeside cabin in Bruce Peninsula where you can literally roll out of bed and into a canoe or a cozy spot in Cape Breton where you can make your morning coffee and watch the sunrise without anyone rushing you to check out. This summer, when you're planning those trips that matter, the ones where you want to actually connect with your loved ones, check out some of the most loved homes across Canada on Airbnb. You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. The talk I'm sharing today is very important to me because it's something I care about a lot.

Beauty standards in our new technological age and the ways digital culture is reshaping our faces and bodies. What does it mean when we so often see ourselves through the lens of our phones or computers? What if the way we look in the real world somehow feels less real or doesn't live up to the image we have of ourselves online? It's not just the topic that means a lot. I also cherish this talk because I gave it. As you may know, the talks I share with you on this show don't happen just anywhere. They happen at our TED conferences. And I gave this TED talk you're about to hear last year at the inaugural TED Next, which is Ted's newest annual flagship.

conference dedicated to exploring the future you, from the personal to the professional and everything in between. Ted Next caters to an audience that's really hungry for innovation and fresh ideas, and I really loved being on the ground in Atlanta where it takes place. It pulses with a fizzy energy, and the conference has all the elements of the well-thought-out and executed programming that we expect from TED. I'm so, so excited to share with you that I will have the honor of hosting a session of talks at TED Next 2025, which is coming soon on November 9th through 11th in Atlanta, Georgia. I helped curate the talks for this session that I'm talking about, and we have really dynamic speakers and artists that y'all are going to love and could really

shift the way you think. It's not too late to join me there in Atlanta at TED Next to see these talks happen live. If you want to learn more about attending, which I hope you do, go to TED.com slash daily next. That's ted.com slash daily next. I hope to see you there. And now, here's my talk. Earlier this year, I was in Taipei, Taiwan, where I decided I wanted to make a TikTok about cup noodle. Only this brilliant TikTok never happened because of the shock I got when I opened up the app and flipped it into selfie mode. The face looking back at me was a face. but not exactly my face. A whole array of beauty filters

had automatically worked me over, and I could not turn them off. There was so much going on here. Skin smoothing, skin lightning, teeth whitening, nose narrowing, bigger eyes, and it gave me a thinner, softer jawline. This was a whole lot of non-consensual filtering, or what someone joked was forced catfishing.

And for me, it's the perfect example of something called the technological gaze at work. What is it? Well, women have had to play to the male gaze forever. you know what that is, but the technological gaze describes an algorithmically driven perspective that we learn to internalize, perform for, and optimize for. And then by taking in all our data, the machines learn to perform us in an endless feedback loop. We learn it so young, an estimated 80% of 13-year-old girls in America

have already used filters or some kind of editing to alter their appearance online. And these days, the filters are hyper-realistic because they tend to be, AI generated. They come with a suite of characteristics teaching us how to look, things like arched eyebrows or higher cheekbones or plump lips. What then happens is we see the gap between the way we look in the mirror and the way we look in these filters, and the digital world begins to dictate real-world beauty standards. We've seen it in celebrity culture, and I know this because I saw it when I lived in work in Seoul, South Korea, as the NPR Bureau Chief there, nearly 10 years ago. Soul is all about optimizing your face in your body. If you want your vagina

rejuvenated, your skull reshaped, any part of your body lifted or enhanced, have at it. It's the cosmetic surgery capital of the world. Nearly half of all Korean women have already undergone some kind of plastic surgery. By the time they're in their 20s, no other place comes close. These days, traptox is really popular. That's injecting Botox into the base of your neck, your trapezius muscles, to give the appearance of a longer neck. Caves are being injected with Botox for the same reason. Having a slimmer jaw line is so desirable that a Seoul plastic surgery clinic

once displayed the human bones of jaws it had shaved down in a glass vase in its lobby. This has since been removed, but this kind of body augmentation work isn't just accepted, it is expected, because in Seoul looks matter so much for your professional and personal advancement. Headshots are required on resumes,

hiring bosses made character judgments based on your faith. You were often bullied if you were bald or big. Trying to look better is framed as a route to economic security and a matter of personal responsibility. But Korea just shows us a more concentrated and extreme example of the pretty privilege that exists everywhere. Look at fat phobia in the United States, helping drive off the charts off-label use of OZempic,

not for diabetes, but for weight loss. It makes sense when we are so rewarded for thinness and stigmatized for fatness. And all I'm saying is we should reckon with this, because the more narrow our idea of beauty is, the wider the pool of ugly becomes. And digital culture is now reshaping our actual faces and bodies. Under the technological gaze,

I worry that our bodies become projects to be worked on forever. And if we don't slow down this body augmentation arms race that I saw in Seoul, then the enhancements that were available there only get farther and farther out of reach, and not just for women. Because if we are chasing digital beauty, well, then the limit does not exist.

AI's idea of attractiveness is only increasingly inhuman and cyborgian. I don't want this. I don't want my daughters coming up in a world in which their looks are the most important things about them. It is incredibly marginalizing to everybody who can't fit in and exhausting for everyone who can because you are constantly having to make or pay for interventions in order to keep up.

So what do we do? Filters aren't going anywhere. But we can challenge what the system is optimized for by changing what it means to be beautiful. Just as the solution to homophobia isn't to make everyone straight and the solution to racism isn't to make everyone white, the solution to lookism and fat phobia isn't to make everyone interchangeably skinny and conventionally pretty.

In fact, it's the opposite. It's to celebrate diversity and the differences that make us who we are that are inherent to the human condition. And ultimately, we have to disrupt a system that reduces our worthiness to our looks. Even though my face is rounder and probably darker than an algorithm would like,

I have come here tonight wearing my actual face. And my hope for all of you is that you feel comfortable and will continue to feel comfortable doing the same, because I see a wide variety of jaw lines out here tonight. And let me just say, they are all worthy. Thank you. That was me, Elise Hugh, at TED Next, 2024.

And if you want to learn more about attending, please go to TED.com slash daily next. Ted.com slash daily next. I really hope to see you there. If you're curious about Ted's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation. guidelines. And that's it for today. Ted Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos,

Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tonica Sung Marnivong. This episode was mixed by Lucy Little. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Ballerazo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet. Thanks for listening. This episode is sponsored by Airbnb. A few years ago, I went to Vancouver for work, and I remember sneaking in a little time to wander Granville Island and grab something from the public market. It reminded me how much I love discovering new corners of Canada with Airbnb. Because let's be honest, when you're traveling with kids, sometimes you just need a kitchen at 6 a.m. That's one of the things I love about Airbnb.

You actually get to settle in. We can have breakfast together around a table, put the kids to bed in real bedrooms, and still stay up with my partner after. That's the kind of setup that makes trips in Canada so much more fun. You're not just getting a place to sleep. You're getting experiences that feel authentically yours, whether it's a lakeside cabin in Bruce Peninsula where you can literally roll out of bed and into a canoe or a cozy spot in Cape Breton where you can make your morning coffee and watch the sunrise without anyone rushing you to check out. This summer, when you're planning those trips that matter, the ones where you want to actually connect with your loved ones, check out some of the most loved homes across Canada on Airbnb. Thank you for your patience.

Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore? Fizz is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply, details at fizz.ca. Our homes are ready for any kind of cuts. We have bandages, sprays, gels to treat them. But we're quick to ignore gum bleeding and inflammation.

We brush it off, literally. Use Colgate Periogard to significantly reduce gum bleeding and inflammation. It helps fight bacteria that can lead to early gum disease and improves gum health with daily use. So, the next time your gums feel sensitive, don't ignore it. Help take care of it with Colgate periogard. Healthy gums, confident smile.