I even have beauty standards vertigo. It’s a horrible condition, filled with self-doubt, confusion and crippling insecurity. This is just not a legitimate medical diagnosis (yet), but something I even have coined on the abject whiplash I get from TikTok on a weekly, if not day by day, basis. One week I’m meant to be getting Botox in my trapezius muscles to offer me a Barbie-like shoulder slope, the following I’m rearranging my mouth after I speak in order to not be a dreaded ‘bottom teeth talker’. I’m being asked to work out whether I’m deer, fox, or rabbit pretty, then to choose from ‘boy pretty’ and ‘girl pretty’. Buccal fat is out, literally sucked out, then it’s back in – youthful, anti-ageing, to not be messed with. Don’t get me began on canthal tilts and ‘doe eyes’.

Depending on the form of your nose, lips, face or hairline, you – at this very moment – is perhaps deemed good. A winner of the wonder standards pinball machine! The subsequent, oh dear, you’re out. Your (insert objectively normal body feature that you just’ve never given a second thought to before) is bad news and wishes changing as soon as possible. Until next week, that’s.

What’s and isn’t beautiful changes more quickly than ever. The world of TikTok beauty standards is an insatiable beast that thrives on trends and frenzied consumerism. Human bodies only have so many parts to unpick, and it looks as if we’re running out – trends have gotten more area of interest, more random and farcical. The recent bottom teeth talker trend is a transparent example of this. We’re also running out of logic and reasons behind our beauty trends; as an alternative of claiming the quiet bit loud (may I point you within the direction of patriarchy and white supremacy) TikTok users have began assigning different levels of value and characteristics to our genetically randomly allocated looks.

This is just not a recent phenomenon, in fact, anthropomorphism has been around for a very long time. Beauty standards have all the time modified and we’ve all the time assigned worthiness to certain appearances. Nevertheless, pre-TikTok brain rot, tracing the cause and effect was simpler. Beauty standards made sense, they usually were far less personal and hyper-individualistic. Within the Dark Ages, for instance, it’s thought the perfect body was principally only one without signs of the plague; French and Burgundian women wore a stuffed sack under clothing to look pregnant. Population sparse equals looking fertile good – it tracks. Fast-forward to 2024 and bottom teeth talkers are being dubbed ‘embarrassing’, ‘unattractive’ and ‘performative’.

So, why has there been an increase on this behaviour? “Social media has given us the opportunity of connecting to and performing for a literal global audience. The necessity to belong and the must be seen and valued underlie our use of social media as we try to know what’s normative and what’s rewarded,” explains Dara Greenwood, associate professor of Psychological Science and director of Media Studies at Vassar. Greenwood explains that because we also seek novelty, we would like to learn in regards to the latest trends to know find out how to belong and be valued, “so the stage is about for people to eat the newest social media content that ostensibly focuses on find out how to optimise individual value which then may translate into social value in our current cultural climate.”

Paradoxically, Greenwood says that we would like to be distinct in an effort to feel like we slot in. “This tricky task is of particular relevance to adolescents who’re negotiating each identity and social development. In fact, what’s misleading about social media is that the ‘norms’ that are on display might be entirely contrived or fabricated by a couple of content creators, but they could gain traction because they’re eye-catching ‘click-bait’. So, there may be a sort of self-perpetuating or self-fulfilling cycle which may be set in motion.”

@yeahimcaroline

Someone said they haven’t seen a natural top teeth talker… thats me ig🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️🤷🏻‍♀️

♬ Hide Away – Daya

Ultimately, I understand the need to suit right into a category. It’s human nature to need to belong and it’s why we take personality quizzes, check our horoscopes and search for commonality with anyone we meet. In some cases, it’s harmless. An increasing number of often, it’s not. The world is increasingly becoming individualistic and isolated – communities decimated and replaced with online comment sections. Our need to seek out categorisation has, in turn, turn out to be rabid; we’re looking for anything to feel belonging. We’re being sold belonging as a commodity (if you should be a strawberry girl you will have to purchase this blush), whilst becoming more separated in our pursuit of it. In isolating every small characteristic as proof of worthiness, we are literally creating more ways to make people feel unworthy.

Let me bring you back to bottom teeth talkers. Megan Fox went on a recent episode of the podcast Call Her Daddy and subsequently went viral for talking through her bottom teeth moderately than her top. The vast majority of us had never given this a second thought before, but a handful of creators with tens of millions of followers jumped on the trend to show which category they fall into – and why that’s an excellent/bad/cringe/attractive thing. These trends are plucked from nothing, go viral, create insecurity, after which disappear. However the damage they leave is lasting.

One TikTok comment read “I feel I’m each???? I still can’t tell which is alleged to be ‘higher’?” It’s a panic I see often in comment sections. Young women and girls panicking that they’re abnormal or flawed, unsure of the instructions they’re being given – and it’s no surprise, the wonder standards manual is now a whiteboard, being erased and rewritten continuously. With beauty trends coming and going so quickly, it’s imperative to not get wrapped up in an not possible pursuit of worthiness. Chasing these trends (especially via cosmetic procedures) won’t provide validation, it’s going to only open the door to more dissatisfaction because our faces and bodies should not flawed as they’re.