Yesterday a client asked for ‘influencer hands.’ Not the manicure – she wanted surgery to match some AI-generated beauty standard from TikTok. Her actual hand shape wasn’t good enough anymore.
That conversation gave me my next book idea.
I’ve been sketching this world where beauty isn’t just aspirational – it’s algorithmic. Your reflection gets software updates like your phone. Neural implants adjust your bone structure in real-time. People subscribe to symmetrical features the way we subscribe to Netflix.
Sounds crazy until you look at what’s already happening. Beauty apps that ‘correct’ your face in real-time during video calls. Filters so sophisticated people forget what they actually look like. The line between enhancement and replacement is blurring faster than my clients can keep up with trend cycles.
The business model practically writes itself. Beauty as Software-as-a-Service. You pay monthly fees to stay current, relevant, optimised. Your face becomes intellectual property licensed from corporate algorithms.
Working title is Project Mirror – still tweaking that. My protagonist fixes glitches in people’s neural aesthetic systems. She genuinely believes she’s helping create a more beautiful world.
She’s wrong, but it’ll take her half the book to realise what she’s actually part of.
This story feels necessary, even if researching it means I can’t scroll Instagram without feeling queasy.
Posted from London, where the future feels uncomfortably close to the present.
— Writer Julia Zolotova
