Through a glass, darkly

The actress Yang Rong says on her Weibo page: "A4 waist (waist width narrower than the long side of an A4 sheet of paper, i.e. less than 21 cm), cold white skin, chopsticks legs… New words are constantly being created to 'educate' us what beauty is, and more and more people are falling into facial anxiety. I always feel that I am not good enough, and I am eager to gain recognition and even love by changing my appearance. But when I came back to my senses, my body and mind were completely different."

Jiang Wenxiu of the Department of Psychiatry at Zhongda Hospital, Southeast University in Nanjing, says: "Appearance anxiety means that many people are not confident enough about their appearance in a social environment that magnifies their appearance. For those younger than about 30 the features of facial anxiety are particularly obvious."

Luo Ning, 26, says all the young women in their 20s around her are familiar with micro-plastic surgery.

"Nowadays young people have particularly high demands on their own appearance, and we begin to prepare for anti-aging at an early age."

She visits private medical beauty institution regularly for hydro-lifting injection treatment. Small red rashes appear on her face, and she feels itchy after finishing the procedure every time, but she cannot get enough of the treatment despite the side effects, she says.

According to the Global Appearance Satisfaction Survey of 2018 by GfK, one of Germany's biggest market research institutes, only 10 percent of people in the Chinese mainland are completely satisfied with their appearance, one-third are between satisfied and dissatisfied, and 13 percent are very dissatisfied.

"The new media and the ensuing aesthetics are affecting the new generation of young people," Jiang says. "All beauty cameras are used to take pictures.

"Celebrities employ professional teams to air brush their photos. The public has gradually become accustomed to zero-blemish skin and creamy skin, so that girls and women subconsciously believe that this is beautiful and it should be. They believe that the face in the beauty cameras should be what they really look like, and they try to get closer to the illusion in real life and look at themselves with automatic filters."

As a result, young women cannot bear the sight of themselves in the mirror, the real self with small acne, small freckles, and pores. Walking down the street, pretty girls look the same, but so out of an assembly line that in a blink of an eye, you have forgotten what that pretty woman who just passed by looks like. Now the public seem to miss the old days before filter cameras began to hold sway.

In a recent small social experiment on YouTube, most women declined an invitation to turn on the camera pointed at them. Although appearance anxiety does not specifically refer to women, they are the biggest victims.

In the case of appearance anxiety, women worry about whether their appearance meets the aesthetic standards and that their appearance may be seen negatively. Research by Professor Yu Qingding of Southwest University suggests that appearance anxiety is significantly related to self-objectification. Individuals with appearance anxiety usually monitor their bodies continuously and treat them as objects based on how they judge what they look like, or self-objectification.

The "I" is no longer subjective, but an object that is always evaluated by others, Professor Yu says. When appearance anxiety becomes severe it may become a mental disorder or even somatic deformity disorder. This kind of mental-psychological illness can induce depression and anxiety. In severe cases the individual will withdraw from social interactions and may even harbor suicidal thoughts or behavior.

"In addition, face value has had a great impact on the survival and marriages of modern women," Jiang says. "A good-looking girl or woman is more likely to gain attention and favor than a plain-looking one. Whether in the workplace or in love, good looks are an advantage. So females are very harsh on their looks, intolerant of any flaws."

Cosmetics companies and medical aesthetics institutions continue to strengthen consumer perceptions to create demand on the pretext that you are beautiful. But the subtext is overwhelming and fiendishly presented in advertising, that subtext being: "After using this product, you will be whiter and more beautiful." It conveys an invisible concept to consumers: beauty has standards, and beauty that does not meet standards needs to be transformed into standards.

Beauty apps, online AI facial value tests and facial value appraisers use beauty standards to determine the alleged defects of the user's face, causing users to feel anxious about their appearance, and to take advantage of the trend to introduce corresponding improvement programs to make users feel better. "Being beautiful" pays the bill.

On Taobao, a livestreaming presenter with several cameras reflecting all angles promotes the skin care and beauty products she just bought. What kind of skin toner is more restorative? How do you match lipstick, eye shadow, and pressed powder? Such topics attract thousands to watch daily. In addition to the beauty live broadcast, now all major social platforms have skin care and beauty columns, and people share the secrets of beauty in the form of text or short videos.

The Prospective Industry Research Institute in Shenzhen says China's cosmetics industry was worth nearly 500 billion yuan in 2019. During the last Singles Day shopping spree festival, in the cosmetics category, the sales of facial care kits alone exceeded 11 billion yuan. The scale of China's medical aesthetics market reached 176.9 billion yuan in 2019, and those under the age of 25 have become the main force in consumption.

"Every time I have done hydro lifting, I feel radiant and confident, but at the same time I start to become dependent and obsessed with it," Luo Ning says. "It is so toxic that I can no longer accept that imperfect self."