The beauty of 2008 was the last of its kind: pre-filters but post-retouching; pre-selfie but post-supermodel. It was a beauty that believed in perfection as a purchase, a product you could apply from a bottle, a compact, or a curling iron. It didn’t yet know that in a few short years, the "portrait" would be taken by its subject, uploaded in seconds, and judged by a global jury of likes.
This beauty is glossy. It is the age of the gloss. Magazine covers were laminated miracles of airbrushing. You couldn't see a pore, a freckle, or a flaw. The ideal skin tone was not "clean" or "glass-like"; it was spray-tanned —a uniform, tangerine-kissed bronze that signaled wealth, leisure, and a disdain for the sun's actual damage. It was the aesthetic of The Hills , of a bottle of Veuve Clicquot chilling on a white leather banquette, of the iPhone 3G’s new, shiny screen. portrait of a beauty 2008
The year is 2008. If you were to paint a portrait of beauty in that specific moment, you wouldn’t use oils or watercolors. You would use a pixel. And you would backlight it. The beauty of 2008 was the last of
And yet, 2008 was also the year of rupture. The same camera that captured this polished perfection was turning inward. YouTube had launched, and the first raw, unlit, unedited "haul" videos and makeup tutorials were beginning to flicker in bedroom webcams. The financial collapse that autumn would soon make the decadent, expensive, high-gloss beauty of early 2008 feel grotesquely out of touch. The portrait was already cracking. This beauty is glossy
