Instagram face is a beauty standard based on the filters and influencers popular on Instagram.[1] An "Instagram face" has catlike eyes, long lashes, a small nose, high cheekbones, full lips, and a blank expression.[2] Digital filters manipulate photographs and video to create an idealized image that, according to critics, has resulted in an unrealistic and homogeneous beauty standard.[3] According to Jia Tolentino, the face is "distinctly white but ambiguously ethnic".[4] The face has been described as a racial composite of different peoples.
While based on digital filters, the look is achieved in person using heavy applications of makeup or cosmetic surgery. Plastic surgery, Botox injections, and injectable filler have significantly increased in popularity since the rise of digital filters.[5] Influencers market makeup products designed to recreate the look. In 2018, Americans underwent 7 million neurotoxin injections and 2.5 million filler injections and spent $16.5 billion on cosmetic surgery. 92% of the latter was performed on women. Botox usage has also been on the rise.[6]
In 2019, The New Yorker referred to this phenomenon as "Instagram Face," identifying Kim Kardashian as its "patient zero." Similarly, her younger sister Kylie Jenner significantly impacted the trend with her 2015 lip filler confession, which acted as a catalyst, introducing Juvéderm to a new generation.[7]
In 2024, cosmetic surgeon Paul Banwell said, "People used to come to see me asking to look like a particular celebrity, but many patients come to me now wanting to look like the filtered version of themselves." The increasing popularity of cosmetic surgeries towards a homogeneous ideal has resulted in the emergence of the "goopcore" sub-genre of body horror.[8] Allie Rowbottom's goopcore novel Aesthetica centers around an influencer attempting to undo years of plastic surgery with a new experimental procedure.