Something about the way we talk about bodies fundamentally scares me. Beauty standards are nothing new, and neither is changing something about yourself, but what feels different now is how much of the human body seems available for modification. We have reached a point where weight can be lost with medication, wrinkles prevented before they appear, faces subtly restructured through injectables, hormones monitored, biological age measured and supposedly lowered. What unsettles me, though, is that this logic has moved on to even bigger things, targeting our health, ageing and apparently even how long we get to live.<\/p>\n
Throughout history, bodies have been shaped by whatever a particular moment considered beautiful, especially in fashion and film, where appearance has rarely escaped judgement. Looking at modeling in particular, there is almost always a prototype who came to embody the ideal of her decade: Twiggy and the slender silhouette of the 1960s, the athletic supermodels of the 1980s, Kate Moss and heroin chic in the 1990s, followed by the exaggerated curves of the Instagram era, only to now arrive at what feels suspiciously like heroin chic 2.0. Obviously, this is not a text about judging any of those bodies. I would hope we have at least learnt that much by now. People naturally have all kinds of individual bodies, as it should be. It seems far more disturbing that we keep deciding there has to be a blueprint for the human body in the first place. Of course aesthetics change, and the way we dress or present ourselves reflects the society around us, but why should that require one physical ideal? Personally, I would rather not have my body become outdated just because the cultural mood has changed.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":[{"ID":132129,"id":132129,"title":"SCHEMA_ISSUE17506","filename":"SCHEMA_ISSUE17506.jpg","filesize":361305,"url":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/SCHEMA_ISSUE17506.jpg","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/when-did-we-become-customizable\/schema_issue17506\/","alt":"","author":"1","description":"","caption":"","name":"schema_issue17506","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":132110,"date":"2026-09-04 11:43:26","modified":"2026-09-04 11:43:26","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1440,"height":1920,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/SCHEMA_ISSUE17506.jpg","thumbnail-width":72,"thumbnail-height":96,"medium":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/SCHEMA_ISSUE17506.jpg","medium-width":1440,"medium-height":1920,"medium_large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/SCHEMA_ISSUE17506.jpg","medium_large-width":1440,"medium_large-height":1920,"large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/SCHEMA_ISSUE17506.jpg","large-width":1440,"large-height":1920,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/SCHEMA_ISSUE17506-1152x1536.jpg","1536x1536-width":1152,"1536x1536-height":1536,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/SCHEMA_ISSUE17506.jpg","2048x2048-width":1440,"2048x2048-height":1920,"trp-custom-language-flag":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/SCHEMA_ISSUE17506-9x12.jpg","trp-custom-language-flag-width":9,"trp-custom-language-flag-height":12,"wpvr_mobile":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/SCHEMA_ISSUE17506.jpg","wpvr_mobile-width":1440,"wpvr_mobile-height":1920}}],"settings":{"fit_width":"4","caption":"Editor-in-Chief: Sara Bastai, Photography: K\u00e9vin Drelon, Model & Makeup: Yulya Zalesskaya, Hair: Rimi Ura, Nails: Magda S., Styling: Joana Zibat, Styling Assistant: Bohdan Puzyk, Production: Error Management, Courtesy of Schema Magazine."}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"
A few years ago, the modern body-positivity movement seemed to push back against exactly that. Women like model Ashley Graham and singer Lizzo helped make bodies visible that fashion and pop culture had ignored for years, and even though the movement was imperfect, quickly commercialised and eventually became a trend of its own, the idea behind it was still important. Bodies did not need to look alike to be beautiful. Now it feels like we are back at the beginning, perhaps even further behind. Extreme thinness is visibly returning to popular culture, while medications are increasingly being repurposed as tools for beauty. The use of GLP-1 drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy for weight loss has become an internet phenomenon, which does not make the whole thing any less bizarre. Somewhere along the way, we seem to have forgotten that these are medications with legitimate medical uses, not beauty products. Yet here we are, discussing them as if they were. Being skinny is still something people are encouraged to chase, and now it can look like something you can buy too. Once changing yourself starts to feel that accessible, opting out can suddenly seem like something you need to justify. If you could be thinner, smoother or younger-looking that easily, why wouldn\u2019t you?<\/p>\n
That way of thinking reaches far beyond weight, though. Recently, I saw a video of a woman talking about someone who proudly announced that she was 30 and had never had Botox. She laughed at first, then stopped, because when she herself had been 30, she had not spent her time trying to preserve the face she had at 25 for the rest of her life. How absurd would that have been? She was just living, surviving and figuring out who she was. That stuck with me, especially because people older than me have already recommended preventative Botox, as if starting before there is even anything to treat is just sensible planning. Right now, I do not want it, although who knows how I will feel in ten or twenty years, and that is precisely why judging individual choices gets us nowhere. What bothers me is the environment in which those choices now happen. Ageing has somehow become something we are expected to prepare against before it has even started.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":[{"ID":132131,"id":132131,"title":"image7","filename":"image7.jpg","filesize":277989,"url":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image7.jpg","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/when-did-we-become-customizable\/image7-3\/","alt":"","author":"1","description":"","caption":"","name":"image7-3","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":132110,"date":"2026-09-04 11:43:45","modified":"2026-09-04 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This exact fear now fuels the longevity boom. And longevity, in its original sense, is about something very human and genuinely good. The point is not simply to live longer, but to stay healthy, mobile and independent for as much of that life as possible. Research shows how complex it actually is, because genetics, metabolism, environment and lifestyle all play a role, yet moving regularly, eating nutritious food, sleeping enough, avoiding smoking and excessive alcohol, managing stress and staying connected to other people already goes a long way. To me, that basic meaning of longevity has almost disappeared underneath everything the term now carries, when really it comes down to staying healthy while growing older, rather than trying to defeat ageing altogether.<\/p>\n
Online, however, that idea has been pushed into something much more extreme. Biological-age tests, blood panels, supplement stacks, peptides, cryotherapy, personalised diets and private clinics now promise to optimise how we age. American tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson may be the most extreme poster boy for that mindset, spending millions on an intensely controlled protocol designed to slow or even \u201creverse\u201d his biological ageing, but the broader mentality already feels familiar. Sleep gets scored, glucose monitored, meals optimised and recovery quantified, so even rest can apparently be done correctly, I suppose. Beauty technology is moving in a similar direction. Even Lady Gaga, for example, recently launched the biotech company Outer Biosciences with Michael Polansky, which uses AI and living human skin tissue to develop new skincare compounds. The fact that a sentence like that barely sounds unusual anymore might be the strangest part. None of this makes the science pointless, of course, but it becomes questionable when staying healthy means structuring your entire life around improving the next score. I keep coming back to the same thought: if you spend your life trying to extend it, what exactly are you saving all that time for?<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":[{"ID":132136,"id":132136,"title":"image33","filename":"image33.jpg","filesize":149346,"url":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image33.jpg","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/when-did-we-become-customizable\/image33\/","alt":"","author":"1","description":"","caption":"AI Generated.","name":"image33","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":132110,"date":"2026-09-04 12:10:32","modified":"2026-09-04 12:21:11","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1447,"height":1087,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image33.jpg","thumbnail-width":128,"thumbnail-height":96,"medium":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image33.jpg","medium-width":1447,"medium-height":1087,"medium_large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image33.jpg","medium_large-width":1447,"medium_large-height":1087,"large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image33.jpg","large-width":1447,"large-height":1087,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image33.jpg","1536x1536-width":1447,"1536x1536-height":1087,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image33.jpg","2048x2048-width":1447,"2048x2048-height":1087,"trp-custom-language-flag":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image33-16x12.jpg","trp-custom-language-flag-width":16,"trp-custom-language-flag-height":12,"wpvr_mobile":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image33.jpg","wpvr_mobile-width":1447,"wpvr_mobile-height":1087}}],"settings":{"fit_width":"4","caption":""}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"
That promise of optimising your entire being also has a much less glamorous side: unequal access to the resources that supposedly make it possible. What we shouldn’t forget is that health has always been shaped by class and circumstance, as well, and the growing market around longevity does little to change that. As diagnostics become more advanced, treatments more personalised and prevention increasingly something that can be bought, the possibilities available to one person may look very different from those available to another. What is presented as a new era of individual control over our bodies could ultimately deepen divisions that already exist. If you ask me, I find the idea of beauty being purchasable uncomfortable enough, but the thought that money might increasingly determine how well, and perhaps even how long, we age straight up concerns me.<\/p>\n
Beauty and longevity may have become so closely linked because both sell us the same thing: control. And what do humans love more than that? We already live in a culture shaped by performance, perfection and extremes, even with important counter-movements pushing against all three, and now that pressure has reached the body itself. The goal no longer seems to be only to feel healthy or live longer. Increasingly, it is to remain efficient, desirable and, crucially, young for as long as possible. Women in particular learn early that ageing means losing something, only to be sold ever more elaborate ways to stop it. Strip away the technology and the biohacking language and the conclusion is almost embarrassingly simple: people are afraid of getting older.<\/p>\n"},{"acf_fc_layout":"images","gallery":[{"ID":132137,"id":132137,"title":"image74","filename":"image74.jpg","filesize":215654,"url":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image74.jpg","link":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/de\/article\/when-did-we-become-customizable\/image74\/","alt":"","author":"1","description":"","caption":"AI Generated.","name":"image74","status":"inherit","uploaded_to":132110,"date":"2026-09-04 12:10:35","modified":"2026-09-04 12:21:16","menu_order":0,"mime_type":"image\/jpeg","type":"image","subtype":"jpeg","icon":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-includes\/images\/media\/default.png","width":1491,"height":1055,"sizes":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image74.jpg","thumbnail-width":128,"thumbnail-height":91,"medium":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image74.jpg","medium-width":1491,"medium-height":1055,"medium_large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image74.jpg","medium_large-width":1491,"medium_large-height":1055,"large":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image74.jpg","large-width":1491,"large-height":1055,"1536x1536":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image74.jpg","1536x1536-width":1491,"1536x1536-height":1055,"2048x2048":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image74.jpg","2048x2048-width":1491,"2048x2048-height":1055,"trp-custom-language-flag":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image74-18x12.jpg","trp-custom-language-flag-width":18,"trp-custom-language-flag-height":12,"wpvr_mobile":"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/image74.jpg","wpvr_mobile-width":1491,"wpvr_mobile-height":1055}}],"settings":{"fit_width":"4","caption":""}},{"acf_fc_layout":"text_area","text_area":"
In all of this I still get that wanting to feel beautiful is human, and wanting to stay healthy for a long time is far from controversial. It starts to go wrong when taking care of yourself turns into correcting yourself, or when having the option to change something makes leaving it alone feel irresponsible. Thankfully, we are not customizable characters waiting for the next update, and ageing should not look like proof that we failed to intervene early enough. Isn’t the most beautiful thing that, over time, our faces and bodies become more our own? Surely that should count for something, especially when we cannot plan and perfect every part of it. Getting out of this mindset means letting bodies change without immediately asking how to reverse it, and showing the next generation that a face, a body and a life do not lose value when they show signs of having been lived. We spent long enough teaching people to fear taking up space. We should not replace that with a fear of taking up time.<\/p>\n"}],"sleek_card_focus":"mid"},"yoast_head":"\n