The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Michigan in Color
Wednesday, April 21, 2021 — 9

The Instagram face and its implications

Do you remember the Kylie Jenner 

lip challenge in 2015? The internet 
went under her spell as countless teens 
took to social media to share videos of 
themselves suctioning their lips inside 
a shot glass, hoping to recreate Kylie’s 
voluptuous (and artificial) lips. The 
results of the challenge were grotesque: 
Participants would end up with 
bloodshot, bruised and swollen lips, and 
some teens were sent to the ER for their 
injuries. Looking back on the challenge 
six years later, I have come to realize 
that a trend I initially found hilarious 
as a child was, is in fact, a symptom 
of a much larger issue: the mindless 
replication of the Instagram look.

What is the Instagram face? Go on 

the Instagram Explore Page, and you 
will soon find out. Most women able to 
garner fame and praise through their 
appearance on social media have very 
similar faces; it is as if their features 
follow a specific template. Based on my 
observations as an avid social media 
user, the “look” often includes:

1.) 
A 
youthful, 
heart-shaped 

face; 2.) A small button nose with 
an upturned tip; 3.) Full lips with a 
defined philtrum; 4.) Full, but well-
groomed brows; 5.) Upturned, cat-like 
eyes; 6.) A defined, forward-pointing 
chin and a chiseled jawline to match; 
7.) High cheekbones; 8.) Defined 
lashes sometimes achieved through 
extensions; 9.) Tan, dewy skin; 10.) The 
length of the nose perfectly trisects the 
rest of the face; 11.) Distance between 
the eyes being equal the width of one 
eye; 12.) Natural-looking makeup; 13.)
Voluptuous bust and buttocks; 14.) A 
tiny waist with defined abdominals; 
15.) Long, shiny hair; 16.) Never 
repeating an outfit and always trendy. 

The Instagram look is racially 

ambiguous, as it includes many 
features commonly found in Black 
women, Indigenous women and other 
women of color. However, BIPOC 
women who naturally have these 
features, compared to rich white and 
white-adjacent women who have 
gone through cosmetic procedures 
to achieve the same features for 
aesthetic’s sake, are rarely given the 
same level of acclaim or endorsements 
for their natural beauty. 

The 
Kardashians 
are 
known 

for going under the knife and 
appropriating ethnic styles to achieve 
a racially ambiguous look, all the while 

denying they have gotten cosmetic 
procedures, 
thus 
further 
raising 

beauty standards for women. Kylie 
Jenner underwent a lip-enhancing 
procedure in her teen years that 
broke the internet, making her the 
pioneer of the Instagram face. She has 
been able to market and create a lip 
product line so successful it elevated 
her to the status of a “self-made” 
multi-millionaire. Through excessive 
tanning, getting procedures to plump 
their lips and creating a more curvy 
figure, the Kardashians are effectively 
appropriating 
Black 
and 
brown 

features as their own. By becoming 
the trademarked beauty standard in 
the 2010s, the famous family did erase 
and is still actively erasing BIPOC 
beauty and encouraging more white 
and white-adjacent women to follow 
suit in appropriating these features.

Consider how we take naturally full 

lips on Black girls for granted, 
but Kylie Jenner’s surgically 
altered ones are admired 
and emulated. White 
models routinely use 
fake or spray tan to 
appear darker and 
more exotic, while 
darker-skinned 
women are rarely 
praised for their 
natural skin tone. 
BIPOC 
women 

often face colorism 
and even sometimes 
pressure to become 
lighter. Also consider 
how East Asians have 
always 
been 
mocked 

through the racist gesture of 
pulling one’s eyes back, but when 
white models are doing said gesture in 
the name of fashion or a more “lifted” 
look, they are deemed as beautiful.

The appropriation doesn’t end at 

BIPOC features — Instagrammers and 
celebrities alike are also appropriating 
BIPOC styles and creativity. A lot of 
the styles popularized by social media, 
such as bandannas and streetwear, 
were worn almost exclusively by Black 
and brown people before the age of 
social media. Through appropriating 
Black and brown creativity, white 
influencers 
and 
celebrities 
have 

commodified styles that used to 
be more accessible to the general 
public. For instance, certain Nike 
sneakers used to be much cheaper 
when they were much more popular 
within minority groups. After the 

popularization of sneaker styles such 
as the Jordan Mids, resell prices then 
skyrocketed 
to 
maximize 
profit, 

thus excluding the communities that 
popularized the style in the first place.

The majority of society are viewing 

these flawlessly posed and edited 
images of Instagram models. Upon 
being bombarded by these images 
of beautiful women online, people 
will subconsciously raise and isolate 
the standard for what it means to 
be feminine and attractive. While 
cis-gendered, heterosexual men are 
viewing these influencers for their 
own enjoyment, as they are likely 
attracted to the models’ physicality, 
women and female-presenting people 
are almost always viewing these 
models for inspiration, in pursuit 
of their beauty, which then turns 
into critical self-deprecation. We 
are socialized to view each other as 

competition. The patriarchy 

encourages us to center our 

physical attractiveness 

at the core of our 

identities, and as a 
result we often view 
ourselves critically 
and take actions, 
such as putting 
on 
makeup 
or 

getting cosmetic 
procedures, 
in 
hopes 
of 

becoming 
more 

“beautiful.” 

Instagram 

models prey on other 

women’s 
insecurities. 

While 
following 
and 

viewing 
your 
favorite 

influencers can start out 

innocently, it almost always leads to 
some kind of comparative self-esteem 
issue. The majority of women and girls 
do not have the same access to makeup 
artists, trainers or nutritionists as 
these models. Therefore, women who 
do not have these resources may feel 
bad about themselves when compared 
to the highly manufactured images 
of Instagram models. Young women, 
and especially teens, without a fully 
developed identity and body image, 
can easily develop self-image issues 
and even eating disorders in pursuit of 
the elusive ideal. 

This beauty standard is so elusive 

that the small fraction of girls who do fit 
into it are getting brand endorsement 
deals, which used to be unthinkable 
before the age of social media. These 

opportunities naturally invoke some 
level of insecurity in other women. 
Like the name “influencer” entails, 
the influencers take advantage of their 
followers’ insecurities and influence 
them to purchase more makeup or 
trendy clothes that often come from 
unethical fast fashion brands. 

Some women have gotten multiple 

forms of cosmetic procedures to 
replicate the Instagram look. Procedures 
such as breast lifts and buttock lifts 
have increased exponentially since the 
beginning of the century, coinciding 
with the rise of social media.

At “best,” men dismiss women they 

find unattractive. At their worst, men 
abuse women they find unattractive, 
especially in romantic partnerships. 
Because of how society treats beauty as 
an integral part of a woman’s identity, 
and if their beauty does not meet a 
certain standard, they could face 
professional and societal limitations, 
in comparison to women who do fit 
that standard. As beauty standards 
become more particular and less 
attainable, society as a whole becomes 
more accustomed to the aesthetic 
expectation of these women online, 
and in real life, there will be a larger 
bracket of women who they might 
deem unattractive. To some extent, 
this will lead to the mistreatment 
of women who are deemed as 
conventionally unattractive. 

On most social media platforms, 

once you interact with influencers, 
the algorithm takes notice and pushes 
more posts of the same genre to you. 
Thus, Instagram models are gradually 
becoming 
omnipresent 
on 
most 

people’s timelines and explore pages. 
While viewing these carefully curated 
images can be exhausting and make 
us insecure, consider that nobody is 
perfect in the way these images are. 
The pictures you see on social media 
are posed and edited: Sometimes even 
with a team behind the model, helping 
her create the best image of herself. 
Knowing how harmful these beauty 
standards are to young girls, there 
are now influencers who are actively 
defying them by posting untouched 
images of their faces and bodies, 
showing their authentic selves.

To whom this may concern: Please 

do take social media breaks if you need 
it! Unfollow the influencers and delete 
the apps if that helps, and always 
keep in mind that pictures posted by 
celebrities are often as manufactured 
as can be.

Mother tongue

Despite 
being 

surrounded by it for 
my entire life, I am 
not 
entirely 
fluent 

in Arabic. There has 
always been a twinge of 
shame 
underlying 
that 

fact, 
breeding 
a 
strange 

sense of inadequacy in me. No 
matter how much I’d like for it to 
be 

different, my proficiency in the language is capricious 
at best. I grew up immersed in my family’s colorful 
Algerian dialect, utilizing it to communicate with my 
grandparents or decipher the occasional scolding I 
received from my mother. Beyond that, I’d always felt 
that what was supposed to be my “mother tongue” sat 
awkwardly in my mouth like dead weight. It fumbled 
the pronunciation of Arabic words, distinctly marking 
me as an imposter when communicating with my 
friends who spoke the language with ease. They 
watched as I struggled with the complex inflections 
that the language demands, unable to muster the 
skillful “-kh” sound or achieve the masterful rolling 
of “r”s with any believable intensity. A red flush crept 
across my face every time someone discovered my 
descent and asked “Inti bthakee Arabi?” (Do you speak 
Arabic?), as I knew that my response would have to be 
a feeble shrug or a lackluster “kind of.” 

That ambiguous “kind of” was qualified by a sizable 

inventory of words and phrases I’d collected throughout 
my life, furtively stowed away in my mind and ready to 
be wielded at any moment that required me to prove my 
validity. I’d learned enough Arabic to navigate family 
situations or conversations with strangers, but never 
enough to gossip about a teacher with my classmates. 
Just enough to get to claim the identity, but never enough 
to claim the language. Despite the looming presence 
it had in my life, Arabic remained largely foreign; any 
interaction I had with it left me feeling like a tourist in 
what was supposed to be my own home.

For a long time, I felt such a strong disconnect 

between myself and my identity — one that I was 
convinced only fluency in the language could bridge. 
I hated the way I sounded “American” every time 
I attempted to slip into Arabic pronunciations or 
the way that words clashed in my throat in frenzied 
discordance. As I grew older, I gained the ability to 
understand most of what I was hearing but could never 
respond with the same ease. I coveted the beauty of 
the language, the way it melted in mouths like butter, 
effortless like silk or honey or true belonging. But with 
each syllable and stressed note dying in my mouth, I 
settled for the silence and languished in the listening. 

While I viewed my lack of fluency in Arabic as a 

deficit in the later years of my life, this was never the 
case when I was a child. Rather, I was enamored by 
the mystical nature of the language, deeming it a world 
of opportunity and never considering myself to be 
condemned from its gates. 

I was particularly enraptured by watching members 

of my family perform the five daily Islamic prayers, a 
beautiful language in their own right. When I was old 
enough to begin praying, I learned by mirroring my 
mother’s movements; I followed each graceful bow of 
her unwavering frame, eagerly awaiting the next cue: 
a triumphant rise, a humble bend, an imperceptible 
yet controlled sway. When it came time to attach 
holy words to those movements, I had to resort to 
learning the sounds of each Surah (prayer). Unable to 
understand the words, I internalized the way they rose 
and collided against each other like waves, committing 
their dynamic movements to memory. I prayed through 
mimicry, reciting a series of noises that had yet to have 
any perceivable definition underlying them. 

Everything about these daily prayers was steeped 

in an indescribable divinity, a sacredness that was just 
out of reach despite its warmth feeling unmistakably 
close. I continued to pray, reciting the sounds from 
memory, moving through the motions with a learned 
knowingness that was tinged with a shadow of doubt 
about the efficacy of my performance. Beyond that 
doubt sat an even darker fear: Does this count? If I’m 
just repeating from memory without knowing the weight 
of the words I’m uttering… am I truly praying? Being 
a stranger to Quranic vocabulary, there seemed to 
be an insurmountable cleft between the words I was 
whispering and the sanctity of the meaning they held. I 
feared that I would fall into that dark chasm separating 
practice and understanding — a fate that no amount 
of mimicry could save me from if I didn’t possess an 
inherent grasp of the language — dooming me to 
remain suspended in my own muddied sense of self. 

I knew that this fear felt traitorous and undeserved; 

Arabic itself had never made me feel scared, only safe. 
It was the language that wafted through my home, 
perfumed with the wisdom of my grandmother and 
tenderness of my mother. Knowing this helped diffuse 
any trepidation that may have tainted such a meaningful 
part of my life. I convinced myself that praying meant 
trying — it was having faith in the words I didn’t 
know and trusting that they would still be heard and 
understood. Through reconfiguring what prayer meant 
to me, I began to fill the gaps left by language on my 
own; I didn’t know what my hums and recited whispers 
meant, but I knew that they meant something. 

Kneeling at a prayer rug, the language stopped 

feeling foreign. While there was still a gnawing sense 
of yearning for the concealed meaning tucked between 
the unfamiliar words, there was also a whisper of 
satisfaction in the fact that I did know them — that I 
could conjure them with my own breath and make 
them come alive on my tongue. They did not have to be 
inaccessible or arcane; they could still be mine. 

As I’ve gotten older and gained comprehension and 

ability in Arabic through experience, the language 
gap still remains. However, I’ve learned that I can 
fill that language gap the same way I did during my 
daily prayers as an 8-year-old, constructing my own 
meaning from the pieces I’ve collected. I am not yet 
fluent in the Arabic language, but the grasp it has on 
me is unequivocal, inspiring a familiarity that could 
only be felt by someone who has known it their whole 
life and in all their lives past. 

YASMINE SLIMANI

MiC Columnist

Disability in the time of climate crisis

The 
student-organized 

symposium, “Loving Our Planet 
Like We Should Love Each Other: 
Disability in the time of climate crisis” 

took place on March 9. The symposium, 
which offered live captioning and 
American 
Sign 
Language-English 

interpreting 
for 
panelists 
and 

attendees, was organized and hosted 
by the students of the Linguistics 102 
course, shedding light on the resources 
and passions that can be mobilized 
amongst the University of Michigan’s 
student body. Though the focus was 
on the climate crisis, the conversation 
was particularly special in that it was 
mindful of the intersectional effects of 
racism, classism and ableism, and the 
panelists were well-equipped to speak 
on each matter. 

The event opened with a land 

acknowledgement, noting that the 
broadcast took place from unceded 
Anishinaabe territories of Osawa, 
Bodéwadmi 
(Potawatomi) 
and 

Meskwahki-asa-hina (Fox) peoples. 
Additionally, 
the 
event 
was 
in 

memoriam of the many disabled people, 
Black and Indigenous community 
members and people of color who 
have died preventable deaths in the 
disaster that has been the COVID-19 
pandemic and in honor of the students’ 
class member Steven Halland.The 
symposium featured four panelists: 
Rafi Darrow, Izzy Laderman, Teddy 
Dorsette III and Sarah Young Bear-
Brown. 

Rafi explained that their experience 

with chronic migraines while living in 
a fire-prone area, amid climate chaos 
and bad air quality, has limited their 
access to the outside world, and has 
forced them to be strategic about when 
and how to go outside and engage. 
Rafi has set an intention to nurture 
solidarity between the chronically 
ill, neurodivergent, mobility-disabled 
and sensory-disabled communities 
through the Bay Area Disabled 
Dance Collective, of which they are 
a founding member. As well, they 
facilitate informative dialogue about 
disability justice and dance through 

the Sins Invalid Podcast, “Into the Crip 
Universe.”

Izzy, who described her personality 

as one of fairy lights and potted plants, 
spoke to her relationship with Ehlers-
Danlos Syndrome. She attested to the 
fact that many disabled or ill people 
deal with more than just one disability, 
and her experience with Ehlers-
Danlos Syndrome is accompanied 
by over 10 additional diagnoses. Izzy 
has embraced this indubitable pain 
to mobilize a community and is now 
the founder and director of Disability 
Awareness Around the Climate Crisis 
at only 17 years old. Through this 
platform, she informs the public on 
the intersections of disability and the 
climate crisis, as well as sex education. 

Teddy immediately acknowledged 

his being Black and deaf are two 
inseparable identities in his life, as 
they are inseparable for all disabled 
people of color who have been limited 
by society and political authority. 
Like Izzy and Rafi, Teddy has 
dedicated his work to uplifting people 
who have been provided similar 
limitations as he. He is a social justice 
advocate, an entrepreneur and a 
filmmaker. As co-founder of Teddyboy 
Entertainment and Def Lens Media, 
he helps provide resources for others 
to nurture their creative skills and 
realize their dreams. For hard of 
hearing and deaf youth, he established 
Reel Def Entertainment, which is a 
non-profit that helps the youth pursue 
their creative arts interests. He is also 
the communications manager and an 
organizer at Detroit Disability Power.

Sarah is a member of the Fox Tribe of 

the Meskwahki nation in Iowa. Sarah 
is a social justice advocate, a political 
figure and a businesswoman. She has 
been an activist for the Indigenous 
Deaf community since 2014 and 
advocated for the No Dakota Access 
Pipeline organization at Standing Rock 
alongside 20,000 other advocates. 
Sarah has taken her platform into the 
political realm as the Vice-Chair for 
the Native American Caucus for the 
Iowa Democratic Party, and she is the 
founder of Gathering of Deafatives, an 
organization for the Indigenous deaf 
community. And, as a businesswoman, 
she creates and sells beadwork through 
her small business SAYBB Creations 

Beadwork. 

Each panelist is active in their 

respective 
communities, 
fostering 

awareness and creating resources 
for the issues enforced unto them 
and their environments. Community 
activism has long been an essential 
part of safety and survival amid lower-
income and disabled populations. 
This is largely because political and 
authoritative figures have failed to 
address disparities across all aspects of 
life and have often been the root of the 
matter. Though the plights presented to 
the disabled community vary, climate 
chaos is a frequent inhibition for those 
with disabilities when it comes to 
having access to day-to-day pleasures 
or when it comes down to survival. 

It has become apparent that the 

climate crisis serves both as a genesis 
for disability and as a worsening factor 
of pre-existing conditions. Rafi spoke 
to their friends’ experiences with tick-
borne Lyme disease, which they note 
has been on the rise across the country 
and is a result of climate change. Ticks 
would normally be killed off in lower 
temperatures; however, because of 
global warming, ticks now thrive in 
certain areas they didn’t used to inhabit. 
Rafi further explained that this is not 
new information, but that disabled 
people are publicly responding to what 
is happening around us all. Similarly, 
though Izzy’s condition is genetic and 
was not caused by the climate crisis, she 
has many peers whose conditions do 
lead back to the climate. She reiterated 
the necessity of recognizing the 
intersections of environmental racism, 
ableism and classism, noting that the 
people most oppressed by such systems 
often reside in close proximity to toxic 
pipelines, plants and other damaging 
infrastructures and meanwhile have 
less access to medical care. To reiterate 
this, Izzy described her friend, who 
lived near a trash-burning plant and 
had highly active asthma. When this 
woman moved to a middle-class white 
neighborhood, her asthma went away. 
People facing ableist conditions deal 
with more dire impacts of the climate 
crisis because of their proximity to the 
infrastructures causing the climate 
crisis, and because disabled people are 
two times more likely to be in poverty, 
this cyclic proximity to environmental 

danger is inarguably biased against 
their livelihood. 

When 
these 
environmental 

threats are compounded with racism 
and ableism, there is often a lack 
of information distributed to those 
living amid the consequences of 
such systems. Teddy addressed the 
Flint water crisis as an example. He 
reflected on his time as the president 
of Detroit Black Deaf Advocates 
— 
during 
which 
the 
advocates 

sought access to clean water and 
other scarcely provided resources 
— noting that the deaf and disabled 
communities in Flint had less access to 
information and were more drastically 
impacted. Teddy said that people did 
not even know where or how to access 
safe supplies. In this case, deafness 
and Black-ness are simultaneously 
weaponized 
against 
individuals, 

limiting access to survival necessities. 
Sarah added that Indigenous people 
were struggling similarly amid the 
Flint water crisis and that this is not 
new; Indigenous communities across 
the country, such as in the Navajo 
Nation, have been suffering from 
water scarcity for years. Within the 
reservation, Sarah said there are 
100,000 people living in extreme 
poverty without access to clean water, 
which further perpetuates disabilities. 
People have to walk far distances to 
get water bottles, and there are no 
cars, so as illnesses increase, the lack 
of accessibility to medical attention 
factors into an exacerbating death toll.

Rafi affirmed that in their hometown 

of Buffalo, N.Y., communities are 
gravely affected by poor air and water 
quality and that this is an apparent 
trend 
amongst 
majority 
Black, 

Indigenous or otherwise systemically 
oppressed 
communities, 
including 

lower-income populations. They went 
on to reference multiple environmental 
determinants that have caused harm to 
their community such as old factories 
causing asthma and other respiratory 
illnesses. Teddy notes that the impact of 
this air pollution has caused particular 
harm to Black women when considered 
alongside the neglect of Black maternal, 
physical and mental well-being. 

ZOE ZHANG
MiC Columnist

GABRIJELA SKOKO 
& ANCHAL MALH

Managing MiC Editor & MiC Columnist

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