Taking a look at looksmaxxing — and what parents should know

In pursuit of 'Instagram face,' are we losing the imperfections that make us human?

Plastic surgery is becoming so normalized and undetectable, it's changing our relationship to reality. The New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino considers how beauty standards have dovetailed with AI.

Do newborn boys really tend to prefer a ‘mechanical object’ to a human face? Failure to assess the confounding effect of an exceptionally high caesarean section rate

We review a twenty year old paper on sex differences in human neonatal social perception, and identify a serious issue: a failure to assess whether the results were distorted by an exceptionally high Caesarean Section rate. This is in addition to a number of other methodological weaknesses, which together mean that there is too much ‘noise’ in the data to draw clear conclusions from the results. The paper’s stark conclusion to have ‘demonstrated’ biological sex differences is unsubstantiated and misleading, and it should no longer be considered a reliable reference point.

Willingness to look stupid

Advancing the Understanding of Phenotypic Mimicry in Men’s Conspicuous Consumption

Two studies advance the understanding of phenotypic mimicry in consumer products. Product features mimicking more prominent male secondary sexual characteristics are associated with men’s behavioral strategies which are higher in mating effort and lower in paternal investment in offspring, in parallel with reproductive strategies across species and within the human population. The first study demonstrated a continuous relationship between the sizes of luxury brand logos and perceptions of the owners’ life histories. Two partial replications reproduced Study 1 results. Study 2 demonstrated that a manipulation of coloration, another fundamental dimension of variation in secondary sex characteristics, generates a similar pattern of results. In both studies, men owning shirts with more prominent sensory characteristics were believed to use authority and intimidation as strategies for advancing social status, whereas men owning shirts with less showy characteristics were believed to demonstrate useful abilities and foster cooperative alliances. Participants also recognized the strategic use of luxury display properties across social contexts.

Sizing chaos

The inter-generational struggle to find clothes that fit more than a tiny portion of women

Survival of the Prettiest (Published 2017)

Darwin’s theory of aesthetics may be the sexiest, most dangerous idea in evolution.

Appearances vs Experiences: What Really Makes Us Happy

In the search for happiness, we often confuse how something looks with how it’s likely to make us feel. This is especially true when it comes to our homes. If we want to maximize happiness, we need to prioritize experiences over appearances.

How Men’s Bodies Change When They Become Fathers (Published 2020)

Hint: They don’t just get “dad bods.”

Debate: Social media in children and young people – time for a ban? Weighing up the implications and limitations of age-based social media restrictions

Recent legislation in Australia banning social media accounts for children under 16, alongside similar proposals worldwide, has ignited debate about whether age-based restrictions are an effective way to protect young people's mental health. While the intent of such bans is to reduce exposure to harmful content, their feasibility and effectiveness remain unclear. Enforcement requires robust age verification, often relying on sensitive data such as government-issued identification or facial scans, which raises privacy concerns and can be circumvented through the use of VPNs. Moreover, social media use is diverse. Although it can intensify harms such as bullying, it also provides vital opportunities for connection and support, particularly for marginalised adolescents. Removing access to accounts may limit risks within platforms, but does not prevent exposure to harmful content elsewhere, nor does it guarantee increased offline engagement. Importantly, blanket bans fail to address unsafe design features embedded within social media or to equip adolescents with the skills needed to navigate online environments. More targeted, evidence-based regulation that promotes safer platform design and accountability may provide a more effective pathway to protecting young people's well-being.

Fearing the Black Body

Winner, 2020 Body and Embodiment Best Publication Award, given by the American Sociological AssociationHonorable Mention, 2020 Sociology of Sex and Gender Di...

Can names shape facial appearance?

Our given name is a social tag associated with us early in life. This study investigates the possibility of a self-fulfilling prophecy effect wherein individuals’ facial appearance develops over time to resemble the social stereotypes associated with given names. Leveraging the face–name matching effect, which demonstrates an ability to match adults’ names to their faces, we hypothesized that individuals would resemble their social stereotype (name) in adulthood but not in childhood. To test this hypothesis, children and adults were asked to match faces and names of children and adults. Results revealed that both adults and children correctly matched adult faces to their corresponding names, significantly above the chance level. However, when it came to children’s faces and names, participants were unable to make accurate associations. Complementing our lab studies, we employed a machine-learning framework to process facial image data and found that facial representations of adults with the same name were more similar to each other than to those of adults with different names. This pattern of similarity was absent among the facial representations of children, thereby strengthening the case for the self-fulfilling prophecy hypothesis. Furthermore, the face–name matching effect was evident for adults but not for children’s faces that were artificially aged to resemble adults, supporting the conjectured role of social development in this effect. Together, these findings suggest that even our facial appearance can be influenced by a social factor such as our name, confirming the potent impact of social expectations.

What the Internet Is Teaching Young Men About Desire

When pornography becomes the default sex education, it reshapes how a generation learns about power, intimacy, and attention

Adversarial Fashion Confronts Surveillance Norms

Adversarial attire can’t stop AI cameras, but can disrupt them

Guidelines on face attributes - Amazon Rekognition

Developer Guide

The Age of Instagram Face

From 2019: How social media, FaceTune, and plastic surgery created a single, cyborgian look.