"The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart" - Fernando Pessoa

The silvered-glass mirror was invented in 1835 by Justus von Liebig - for the first time in history ordinary people could afford a mirror of their own.

We haven’t been the same since.

No longer were we looking at ourselves in the vivid reflection of water’s surface. From now on we would be able to see our reflection every single morning.

From now on we would be critiquing, dissecting, finding flaws and obsessing over every detail of our own faces and bodies.

Technology moved from the mirror to the photograph. From the photograph to digital photograph. From the digital camera to the in-built camera in our smartphones.

The story of body image arrives here in 2019. With the introduction of social media we now see our own faces and body’s more than any humans in history.

While our hunter gather ancestors would have been largely unaware of their own appearance, we’re exposed to our own appearance on a daily basis. In bathroom mirrors, in the photos we’re tagged in and on our smartphone screens as we spin that camera around into selfie mode.

In 2019, we spend a strange amount of time looking at our own faces and our own bodies.

And no wonder. In the modern world your appearance is incredibly important many aspects of your life.

Your aesthetics (especially your facial aesthetics) are a cruel genetic lottery. Some receive all of the incredible advantages of being born beautiful while others are left to suffer the brutally unfair repercussions of being born ugly.

Forget racism or sexism. The most widespread discrimination in 2019 is lookism.

Can we really call a 10/10, drop-dead gorgeous black woman “oppressed”?

Can we truly claim that a 5’0 tall, balding, chubby, ugly white man is “privileged”?

Given the importance of looks in our society - it figures that there are online communities taking drastic measures in order to improve their aesthetics.

The Looksmaxing Ideology