Media

Radio

‘Children Social Media and AI: A source of Good or Bad? - Voice of Islam Drive Time (August 2025)
Being Blonde - Free Thinking (October 2023)
ABC Radio National Australia - The Philosopher's Zone (May 2022)
"You'd be Very Pretty if you Lost Weight": Birmingham Professor Launches Campaign Against 'Lookism' - Free Radio (June 2019)
Beauty - Ugliness - Thinking Allowed, BBC Radio 4 (July 2018)
The Body, Past and Present - Free Thinking, BBC Radio 3 (June 2018)
The Beauty Imperative - The Philosopher's Zone, ABC Radio, Australia (April 2018)

TV and Films

"Crazy for Plastic Surgery" Interview with ARTE - French Version
"Crazy for Plastic Surgery" Interview with ARTE - German Version
“Plastic Surgery: Explained" Vox.com documentary series on Netflix (September 2021)
"Subjects of Desire" documentary (premiered at SxSW Festival, March 2021)
Perfect Me, VPRO Tegenlicht (Netherlands, 17 January 2021)
What Makes Me, Me? - Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, BBC 4 (December 2018)
Panel discussion on labiaplasty - Victoria Derbyshire, BBC 2 (July 2017)

Public Lectures and Festivals

‘Naming and Shaming: Responding to Lookism’, Lockwood Memorial Lecture, Uehiro Centre, June 2023
‘Why Beauty Matters’, Stadium Generale, Groningen, 9 March 2023
‘Lookism’ The Royal Society of Scotland and Royal Institute of Philosophy Annual Lecture, 7 December 2022
‘Do Clothes Maketh the Human’, #LSEForum, 20 November 2019
‘Everyday Cyborgs and Perfect Bodies’ British Science Festival, 20 September 2019
‘Beauty without the Beast’, Swindon Arts Festival, 21 May 2019
'A duty to be beautiful' The Hay Literary Festival, 29 May 2018
'A duty to be beautiful', Imagine, Belfast Festival of Ideas and Politics, 14 March 2018
Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal, The Oxford Literary Festival, 3 April 2019
‘Perfect Me!’, The Hay Festival, 24 May 2014

Blogs and Op-eds

To resist the rising demands of beauty, we should start by abstaining from body shame - ABC Australia (June 2022)
New Year, New You? Why We Think a Better Body Will Be a Better Self - The Conversation (January 2020)
Fantastic Beasts – experts explain the mysterious real life questions behind JK Rowling’s magic tales - The Conversation (November 2018)
Body Hair is Natural - Society Thinking Otherwise is Dangerous - Time (June 2018)
If You Want to Lose Weight, Ask Yourself: is This Really Self-Improvement? - The Conversation (January 2018)
Weinstein, philosophy and structures of abuse - iai News (November 2017)
How the Duty to be Beautiful is Making Young Girls Feel Like Failures - The Conversation (June 2017)

Podcasts

‘Looks Don't Matter" & Other Myths | with Prof. Heather Widdows & @podcastuldefilosofie’ (September 2025)
‘Heather Widdows on beauty as an ethical ideal’ - Podcastul de Filosofie (September 2025)
"How Much Would You Give Up to Be More Attractive" - Death, Sex and Money (June 2025)
The Ethics of Beauty (April 2024)
"What should we do about the beauty ideal," - Ethics Untangled Podcast (January 2024)
The Beauty Ideal - The Panpsycast Philosophy Podcast - Part 1 (June 2023)
Perfection and the Culture of Comparison - The Living Jewishly Podcast (August 2022)
Beauty - Voice of Islam Drive Time (August 2022)
The Ethics of Beauty - Fat Mascara (August 2021)
Are image editing apps damaging our mental health? - Newstalk (October 2020)
Out of the Vat #5 - Heather Widdows - Out of the Vat Podcast, LSE (February 2020)
An Introduction to Intuitive Exercise, with Tally Rye - Body Cons Podcast (July 2019)
What is #everydaylookism? - Adrian Goldberg's talk show (June 2019)
What is Beautiful? – Stance podcast (December 2018)
What Will we See in the Mirror of Erised? - Fantastic Research, University of Birmingham (November 2018)
Ethics, Beauty and the Handmaid's Tale - Appearance Matters podcast (July 2018)
The Moral Philosophy of Beauty - 3CR, Australia (April 2018)
Are we Becoming too Preoccupied with Beauty? - Philosophy 24/7 (March 2018)

Psychology Today

Beauty Demands

Articles/Programmes that cite Heather

"How to think in the age of AI," - The New Statesman (April 2025)
"AI 'Chubby' Filter Causes Outrage on TikTok," - Newsweek (March 2025)
"My father had plastic surgery. Now he wants me and my mother to get work done," - The Guardian (January 2025)
"‘People think that looking better means you will have a better life’: why gen Z spends so much on beauty," - The Guardian (August 2024)
"We're In Micro-Insecurity Hell," - allure (August 2024)
"Why do we see beauty as virtuous and ugliness as a problem to be fixed?" - ABC News (February 2024)
"Januhairy: What embracing body hair says about the beauty ideal," - euronews.culture (January 2024)
"We were never supposed to see our own faces this much," - Dazed Beauty (September 2023)
What your new year's resolution says about you - Bustle (January 2023)
The Harms of Lookism - The Herald (December 2022)
Is it bad that I still want to be ‘beach body-ready’? - Evening Standard (July 2022)
Social construction, or the product of evolution? The intense debate around our attraction to the “Instagram face” - Le Monde (July 2022)
Can lip filler make you happy? - Slate (July 2022)
Interviewed on Lookism – Vogue Japan (September 2021)
How young people fell for cosmetic surgery - The Times (September 2021)
Image Isn’t Everything, Sussex Express (print) (November 2020)
How Isolating in Quarantine Has Been Detrimental To Our Body Image – Seventeen (October, 2020)
Ask the Expert: How can I persuade my teen not to edit her photos on social media? - The Irish Times (October 2020)
Heather’s comments in support of the Mental Health Foundation briefing paper on Image-editing apps and mental health were quoted in 264 outlets directly (PDF list available on request). Including: Image editing apps: The problem for our mental health - Happiful (October 2020), Call to limit body-editing apps for children - BBC Newsround (October 2020), Mental health experts call for restrictions on image-editing apps –Mail Online; Express and Star; Belfast Telegraph; Central Fife Times (September 2020).
Zoom is making us hate our faces - Mic (September 2020)
Why wellness is a $6 trillion confidence trick - Financial Review (July 2020)
Why do women feel pressured to shave? - Newsdio (June 2020)
The dark side of the wellness industry - New Statesman (June 2020)
The dark side of the video call boom - The Telegraph (June 2020)
What’s the Next ‘Instagram Face’? – Paper Magazine (May 2020)
Dr. Ourian on Cosmetic Surgery’s Holy Grail – Paper Magazine (May 2020)
How Self-Isolation and Social Distancing is Messing With Our Sense of Self – Dazed (April 2020)
What these people can teach you about accepting yourself – Women’s Health (print) (August 2019)
Why women feel pressured to shave - CNN Style (March 2020)
Do French Women Really Have the Secret to Aging Gracefully? - Vogue (February 2020)
Books That Changed Me: Bri Lee - The Sydney Morning Herald (January 2020)
Investigation of Beauty and Body Image Short But Sound - The Sydney Morning Herald (December 2019)
The Age of Instagram Face - The New Yorker (December 2019)
Exploring the Mind-Body Problem and Rise of Body Anxiety - Dazed Digital (October 2019)
Attack of the Insta Clones – Daily Mail (August 2019)
Beauty is no Longer Just About a Beautiful Body, and that can be Dangerous – Trouw (July 2019)
'You'd be gorgeous if you lost weight' - People share their worst body-shaming experiences - Birmingham Live (June 2019)
Is our obsession with a healthy glow more complicated than we think? - Dazed Digital (May 2019)
Beauty Without the Beast – Heather Widdows - Festival Chronical (May 2019)
Mermaids: Drawn to Scales - Big Issue North (April 2019)
What Beauty Demands: An Interview with Heather Widdows - Imperfect Cognitions (March 2019)
100 Best Books to Read in a Lifetime (2019) - Edarabia (February 2019)
Heather Widdows: The Ugly Side of Beauty - Guernica magazine (January 2019)
The 19 Best Books of 2018 - The Atlantic (December 2018)
Generation selfie: How is Instagram Altering our Understanding of Beauty? - The Bod Edit (July 2018)
The Case of 'Dr Bumbum' Shows that Beauty has been Regarded as a Moral Virtue - BBC News Brazil (July 2018)
My Visit to the World's First Gym for Your Face - The New Yorker (June 2018)
Make-up: Have YouTube Stars Boosted Beauty Sales - BBC News, Business (June 2018)
You Don't Have to be Beautiful to be Successful - but the World Makes us Feel That Way - Refinery29 (June 2018)
I Feel Pretty's Intentions are Good, but it Fails to Deliver an Empowering Message - Huffington Post (May 2018)
A pretty little double standard Boston Globe (May 2018)
'You Can't be Hairy, Fat and Ageing': Why Beauty is Becoming a Moral Imperative for Us All - ABC News, Australia (April 2018)
Why Amy Schumer and Kate Middleton can't win - Sydney Morning Herald (April 2018)
When Beauty is a Troll - The Atlantic (April 2018)
'I Feel Pretty' and the Rise of Beauty-Standard Denialism - New York Times (April 2018)
The rise of Non-Surgical Beauty: ‘My Mum Said my Lip Looked Like a Rubber Dinghy’ - The Guardian (April 2017)
Unthinkable: Why are Beauty Standards Becoming More Onerous? - The Irish Times (May 2016)
Is Cosmetic Surgery the New Acceptable Face of Womanhood? - The Guardian (June 2015)