From “get ready with me” videos to reels of “the 7 essentials you need in your purse right now,” and “the latest fashion trends,” young women and teenage girls’ TikTok and Instagram feeds are filled with all the ways they need to better themselves. At first glance, these posts seem harmless; however, seeing video after video of how you need to better your life in unachievable ways leaves the self feeling inadequate.

The beauty industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry that is expected to reach almost $736 billion in global revenue by 2028. Making up more than 20 percent of the entire e-commerce market, the beauty industry has been propelled by the expansion of social media since the COVID-19 Pandemic. Feminist artists like Martha Rosler began critiquing the problems associated with the beauty industry back in the 70s, but the problem of marketing to women has only grown since. Sophisticated algorithms, propelled by watching their users’ every move, project enviable lifestyles through influencers’ perfectly lit, clean, and hypnotic videos and posts. Today, the targeted social media ads, influencers promoting products, and videos telling women how to create “the perfect life” cause young women, and even younger girls, to self-objectify.

Through mixed media drawings, I expose the absurdity of the beauty industry propelled by social media by exaggerating the images we are exposed to every day. I juxtapose digital elements of social media against drawn marks that masquerade as beauty products. Oftentimes, only fragments of the image are rendered to completion, coinciding with the ways in which women are picked apart and objectified in the media. By mixing figuration and abstraction and calling on feminist theorists, I highlight the internal conflict that arises from the critical self-evaluation that I, and many other young women, have grown accustomed to with the use of the internet and social media.