The trouble with online safetyism

Epileptics being maliciously exposed to flashing images. Children being bullied via social media. Adults being misled by material about medical interventions. Since it was conceived by academics in 2018, the Online Safety Bill — which returns to Parliament this week …

Selfies have made you ugly

Modern man, wrote the social psychologist Erich Fromm in 1956, “has been transformed into a commodity”. Scroll through social media, and you will see this transformation is absolute. On one side, we are asked to rate glamorous, increasingly similar-looking people …

The dawn of the New Puritans

It looks like some upsetting combination of a homecoming dance and a wedding. The teenage girls are dressed in polyester facsimiles of the big white poofy gowns they’ve fantasised about wearing since childhood, arm in arm with older men in …

Women can’t be beautiful

I don’t care that much about my appearance. I don’t waste time chasing after arbitrary beauty standards. I get my hair done, though, and I’ve started to have it coloured since I turned 40, but that’s very low maintenance: four …