I follow a lot of cooking accounts on TikTok and Instagram, which means that I get served ever more cooking content, and over the past few years, I’ve noticed a stylistic change. But lately, more and more of the cooking video creators appear as their full selves, and most of them are blandly attractive. I don’t know about you, but I don’t need a chef to tell me that a ham and cheese sandwich tastes good. It’s reached the point where I can’t tell: Are these recipes good, or are the people leading me through them just good-looking in a way that’s rewarded by social media algorithms? But it made me wonder whether the “beauty premium” — something that economists have observed over many years — is greater now that individuals with all different levels of expertise can get a career boost from having a robust social media presence.

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Persons: I’ve, BuzzFeed’s, speck, burrata, It’s, ”, Vox’s Rebecca Jennings, “