In the age of the algorithm, social media platforms and machine learning technologies are now defining, and perpetually updating, aesthetic ideals and beauty standards. In this episode, we discuss how beauty culture is entangled with the digital technologies that have become so pervasive in everyday life. How does ‘algorithmic oppression’ play into the creation and maintenance of beauty standards, and how does it feel to exist as cyborg, changeling bodies within all of this? Inspired by various works of fiction and drawing upon critical theory, we explore how we might hack and resist the affordances of these technologies through embodying and embracing glitches, and in ways that gesture towards queer and non-binary becoming. 

Atlanta, E. (2024) Pixel Flesh: How toxic beauty culture harms women. London: Headline Publishing Group.

Awad, M. (2023) Rouge. New York: Scribner Publishing.

Noble, S. U. (2018). Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism. New York: New York University Press 

Russell, L. (2020) Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto. London: Verso Books.

Sender, K. & Shaw, A. (2017) Queer Technologies: Affordances, Affect, Ambivalence. London: Routledge

Ta-Wei, C. (1995 [2021]) The Membranes: a novel. Columbia: Columbia University Press.

Zuboff, S. (2019) The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The fight for a human future at the new frontier of power. London: Profile Books Ltd. 

Zwick, D. & Knott, J. D. (2009) “Manufacturing Customers: The database as new means of production.” Journal of Consumer Culture, 9(2).

Subscribe to our Patreon for exclusive unfiltered book-club style episodes about our current reads and thoughts... patreon.com/TheHopefulReader

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.