AI Summary
5 min readThe Internet Is More Image-Focused Than Ever
In 2016, the Barbie doll was relaunched with different body types. Body positivity influencers were gaining traction on Instagram. A study found that teenage girls who saw body-positive content on Facebook reported feeling happier about themselves and having better self-esteem. It felt like the culture was finally moving toward accepting ourselves with more kindness. Then something shifted. Sophie Gilbert, a staff writer at the Atlantic and author of Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves, argues that the internet has entered a new, more image-obsessed chapter—one that feels more inescapable than anything that came before.
The Rise and Retreat of Body Positivity
The body positivity moment that peaked around 2016 was real and measurable. Influencers broadened the conversation about bodies, encouraging people to approach themselves with neutrality if they couldn't reach full positivity. The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, however cynical it seemed, had a positive impact. And one area where that progress has genuinely stuck is parenting—Gilbert notes that parents today simply do not talk to children about their bodies the way they did in earlier decades.
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What you'll learn
- 1 (01:05) **Cold Open: Natalie calls her mom about body image** - Natalie recounts a childhood memory of looking at women's bodies on magazine covers at the grocery store and her mom's direct response.
- 2 (04:20) **Introducing the core question and the expert** - The hosts frame the episode's central puzzle: why does body image pressure feel more inescapable now than just a few years ago?
- 3 (06:00) **The 2016 moment of body positivity** - Sophie describes the cultural peak of body positivity and why it felt like a genuine antidote.
- 4 (08:40) **The shift: The return of the skinny ideal** - Sophie explains how the cultural winds have changed in the last two to three years, especially since COVID and the rise of GLP-1s.
- 5 (12:04) **The new honesty about cosmetic procedures** - The conversation turns to how people are now openly showing off their plastic surgery and fillers online.
- 6 (13:37) **The pivot to video and the image-saturated internet** - Sophie identifies the main driver of the new pressure: the internet has become overwhelmingly image-focused.
- 7 (15:53) **Break and return: The gap between online perception and reality** - After a break, the hosts and Sophie discuss how cosmetic procedures seem more common than they actually are.
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Show Notes
It wasn’t that long ago that “body positivity” was all over the internet. Oppressive beauty standards hadn’t gone away by any stretch, but many people on social media were pushing against limits on what an “ideal” body could look like. Now, things have swung in the opposite direction, with the rapid uptake of GLP-1s and the resurgence of a skinny ideal, combined with a new frankness about plastic surgery. The calls for “self-love” and “health at any size” can be harder to hear these days over the roar of looksmaxxers and influencers talking about weight loss and cosmetic procedures.
In this episode of How to Touch Grass, hosts Natalie Brennan and Julie Beck talk with Atlantic staff writer Sophie Gilbert, the author of Girl on Girl: How Pop Culture Turned a Generation of Women Against Themselves, about how the culture of the internet got even more image-focused and the role that social-media algorithms play in distorting what people consider “normal.”
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