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Pixel Flesh

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What to expect

A generation defining exposé of toxic beauty culture in our digital age and how it is harming women

We are living in a new age of beauty. With advancements in cosmetic surgery, augmented reality face filters, photo editing apps, and exposure to more images than we were ever meant to see, we have the ability to craft ourselves in whichever way we please. We pinch, pull, squeeze, tweeze, smooth and slice ourselves beyond recognition. But is modern beauty culture truly empowering? Are we really in control?


In every era there is a beauty ideal. Yet, today the pressure to attain and retain the perfect body is compounded by our addiction to sharing every angle of ourselves online. In an age of influencers and social media, modern beauty culture is all-consuming and it is hurting the lives of women around the world.

From Love Island to lip filler, blackfishing to the beauty tax, Ellen Atlanta reconfigures our understanding of women's relationship with beauty culture to account for the digital age. Providing an eye-opening account of the realities young women face under a dominant industry, Pixel Flesh unmasks the absurdities of the dystopia we find ourselves living in. Both a rallying cry and a refusal to suffer in silence, this is a vital insight into what it feels like to exist as a woman in a digitally obsessed world.

Critics Review

  • This book is a brilliant clarion call for better. Ellen is masterful at exploring the complexities of modern womanhood

    Gina Martin

  • Confronting the conformity and compliance of today’s beauty culture, Ellen Atlanta’s revealing new book charts the course for a brave new world in which women and girls can – at long last – be comfortable in their own skin

    Victoria Bateman, author of Naked Feminism

  • With kaleidoscopic vision, meticulously researched insights, and the narrative power of a novelist, Ellen Atlanta’s Pixel Flesh unravels the complex tapestry of standards and perceptions that shape our identities. Pixel Flesh is not just a book; it’s an essential mirror reflecting the profound impact of beauty culture on our lives, urging us to question and redefine our notions of allure and authenticity

    Chloé Cooper Jones, two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and author of Easy Beauty

  • Pixel Flesh stopped me in my tracks. It took me back to my girlhood in a bold, unexpected and poetic way like a Grimms’ Fairy Tales, but with Kylie’s Lip Kits. Ellen has a unique talent for helping you see through other’s eyes and making you feel seen yourself

    Freya Bromley, author of The Tidal Year

  • A rigorously researched and deeply personal account of the modern female experience. Pixel Flesh is a searing and lucid appraisal of internet culture’s most corrosive and diminishing aspects; from predatory algorithms, celebrity, cosmetic surgery, disordered eating and the tyranny of performing a self. A must-read guidebook on the dizzying hall of mirrors that women must navigate online and the dangerous real world consequences that follow

    Nada Alic, author of Bad Thoughts

  • A riveting exposé of toxic beauty culture and how it harms women […] blends personal confessions with razor-sharp insights

    The Bookseller

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