The concept of beauty is being rewritten—not by genetics, culture, or the timeless eye of the beholder, but by algorithms, AI filters, and hyper-optimized digital illusions. What was once a matter of nature, nuance, and individuality has now become a technological product—edited, gamified, and synthetically perfected.
Today, the perfect face is not born; it is built. Created by artificial intelligence, enhanced through cosmetic procedures, retouched on photo-editing apps, and finally validated by dating algorithms that reward symmetry, flawlessness, and compliance to a new digital aesthetic. In this world, beauty isn’t seen—it’s engineered.
So much so, that even historical beauty icons—Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, Marilyn Monroe—are now casually dismissed as “mid” by Gen Z, a term meaning average or unimpressive.
That shift snapped into focus on May 2, when Faye Oakley, a 26-year-old British musician and student, posted a TikTok video that went viral. In it, she argued that society’s perception of beauty has been “rotted” by AI, porn, and dating apps. Her post questioned whether the very definition of attractiveness had been deformed by algorithmic influence and cultural overexposure to perfection.
“People would call Cleopatra or Marilyn Monroe ‘mid’ today,” Oakley said in her video, which has now garnered over 645,000 likes. “The standards have shifted so far that natural beauty is no longer enough.”
And the reaction to her post only proved her point: instead of reckoning with the ideas she raised, many commenters simply argued whether those women were “actually” attractive—as if confidence itself must now be justified by consensus.
AI-Driven Beauty: The Rise of “Algorbeauty”
We are in the era of algorbeauty, a term coined by Dr. Benjamin Caughlin, a board-certified plastic surgeon, to describe how algorithm-driven aesthetics now dictate what’s desirable. Caughlin says patients are increasingly bringing AI-generated images as surgical inspiration—images of people who do not, and could not, exist.
Makeup artists echo the same concern. Celebrity artist Amanda Gabbard notes that clients come in with airbrushed celebrity screenshots and TikTok filters as their reference points. “They’re chasing something that was never real to begin with,” she told Newsweek. And when real life doesn’t match, self-loathing begins.
The result is a new aesthetic culture that values the hyperreal: ultra-smooth skin, massive eyes, sharp jawlines, tiny waists. Think AI-generated avatars, or influencers whose faces are half filter, half filler.
Beauty Has Become a Numbers Game
Dating apps play a massive role in reinforcing this. They’re not designed to foster connection—they’re designed to maximize engagement. And that means constantly showing you someone “better.” This endless scroll creates a belief that beauty is infinite and perfectible. A beautiful woman today might be considered subpar tomorrow—there’s always another profile to swipe on.
Oakley puts it bluntly: “We’ve created a system where no woman is ever enough. The expectation is that she should be flawless, pornographic, and submissive—and if she dares to feel good about herself, she must be humbled.”
That desire to “humble” confident women is growing. A self-assured woman on TikTok or Instagram is met not with admiration, but derision. The message is clear: confidence must be earned, and even then, only granted by others.
From Cleopatra to ‘Mid’—A Cultural Freefall
How did Marilyn Monroe go from sex symbol to “mid”?
Because the baseline has changed. AI has flooded our feeds with digitized perfection. We now see thousands of artificial faces a day—many engineered to match our personal preferences through algorithms. The result? Real people, even famous ones, begin to look flawed by comparison.
As cultural theorist Dr. Anastasia Kārkliņa Gabriel notes, our brains are being “rewired.” The real is now judged against the impossible. Skin texture, aging, asymmetry—these are no longer accepted features of being human. They are problems to fix, signs of failure.
Porn, Perception, and the Male Gaze
Pornography has quietly merged with beauty culture. The women seen in porn—digitally enhanced, always pleasing, always perfect—set another impossible benchmark. As Oakley points out, many of these depictions prioritize male desire over female comfort or agency. The more people consume this kind of content, the more it shapes what they expect in real life.
And AI is making it worse. It can now generate pornographic images tailored to individual users’ preferences—feeding a cycle of hyper-specific, hyper-sexualized fantasy that no real woman can ever match.
The Algorithm Is Watching—and Deciding
Social media and dating apps are not neutral platforms. They are curators of beauty, rewarding certain looks, punishing others. Filters reward symmetry. Engagement boosts filtered perfection. AI-generated faces go viral. The algorithm becomes the new gatekeeper of beauty.
And in this system, even perfection is disposable.
The Real Cost: Identity, Confidence, and Worth
What’s being lost is not just appreciation for natural beauty—it’s women’s ability to feel whole in their own skin. As Oakley says, “We’ve created a culture where women are expected to live up to a standard that doesn’t exist, and then punished when they dare to believe they’re beautiful.”
Dr. Gabriel echoes this: “Beauty has historically been about aspiration. But today, it’s about engineering identity to meet a moving, artificial target. And the more you chase it, the further away it gets.”
The Beholder Is Now a Bot
The definition of beauty used to lie in the eye of the beholder. But the beholder is now an algorithm—and its standards are inhuman. In this climate, even icons like Marilyn Monroe or Cleopatra are no longer good enough. And if they aren’t, who is?
This isn’t just a conversation about aesthetics—it’s about autonomy, confidence, and who gets to define worth in a digital world.
If beauty is no longer real, how can we ever feel beautiful again?
