Smile Lines is a visual project taking both film and photographic form in pursuit of starting a conversation on today’s pressing beauty standards. Similar to its partner project Pedigree, Smile Lines uses imagined scenarios to create a portrait series that reflects on reality. The conversation zooms in on society’s self-care culture, exhibited particularly strongly online and on the social media targeted towards young people. What often disguises itself as a form of personal care is actually a promotion of visual maintenance, issued to impressionable minds. For decades, capitalism has benefited from the advertising of beauty products that women may ‘need’, but now in 2025, instead of progress digressing away from that, we see an expansion of the problem. This project was made in response to the recent online trend promoting the avoidance of “smile lines”, providing tips and tricks to young people on how to combat signs of aging. The saturation of dystopian beauty rituals on social media infiltrates our media, purchases and habits so discreetly that it hides under the concept of therapy and love. But, when the mental health of so many is negatively effected by this culture, are there even any smile lines to avoid?