Colleen

“it felt a bit like these companies were playing with the ideas of equity and advancement for women, which is not the same as actually doing it.”
― Marisa Meltzer, Glossy: Ambition, Beauty, and the Inside Story of Emily Weiss's Glossier

“The changing trends reflected evolving user preferences, but they were also a reaction against the burnout-inducing standard of the peak influencer era. “We all know the jig is up,” said Matt Klein, a cultural strategist. “We’ve all participated in those staged photos. We all know the stress and anxiety it takes. And we can see through it. Culture is a pendulum and the pendulum is swaying. That’s not to say everyone is going to stop posting perfect photos. But the energy is shifting.” For the reigning influencers, the shift was disorienting and even catastrophic. “What worked for people before doesn’t work anymore,” said James Nord. In 2018, a creator could post a shot with manicured hands on a coffee cup and rake in the likes. By 2019, people would unfollow. According to Fohr, by the end of that year, 60 percent of influencers in his network with more than 100,000 followers were losing followers month over month. “It’s pretty staggering,” he said.”
― Taylor Lorenz, Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet

“The way words stay, the way sentences stay, the way memories invade my present, the way a stranger looks at me and speaks: shards that become a mirror.”
― Chloé Cooper Jones, Easy Beauty

“I want to grab her and confess that I'm an unbeliever. That being on that machine makes me feel like I'm running in some sucking substance worse than mud. I can find no foothold, no traction. That I feel out of control, inches from the lip of the abyss. That while we've been sitting here, there's this angry, hungry maw in me that is fathoms deep. But even though Ruth's only a hair thinner than I am, she's way on the other side of the fat girl spectrum, looking at me from the safe, slightly smug distance of her own control and conviction.”
― Mona Awad, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl