Latest news with #Euro-centric
Daily Mirror
31-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
'TikTok's perfect face trend is a fast track to making people feel like they're not good enough'
Editing celebrities' faces to fit a 'perfect' mould has become a popular trend online, regularly gaining millions of viewers. But a beauty expert warns it could be damaging people's self esteem We're taught that beauty is subjective – but is it? As part of a popular online trend, creators are editing celebrity faces to fit a 'perfect face' template. But how does it affect the audience watching it? If you type 'perfect face' into the TikTok search bar, you'll be instantly met with hundreds of videos from a multitude of creators. They all follow a similar format: they take a front-facing photo of a popular celebrity and then place a 'perfect face' template over it, before using editing software to warp their features to fit. They then reveal a 'before' and 'after', which in many cases shows the celebrity contrasted with a face almost unrecognisable to their own. One of the most popular of these accounts is @artgasmm, a digital artist with over 34K followers and whose videos regularly rack up millions of views. Some of the most recent subjects include Lola Tung and Christopher Briney, stars of The Summer I Turned Pretty, and Jojo Siwa. While, together, these videos drew almost 10 million viewers, many of the commenters have expressed their upset and discomfort with the warped features. Under Jojo's video, one wrote: 'She's a beautiful girl, don't think she needs you describing what her perfect face would be." Another said: 'Hey so let's not normalise this perfect face s**t…can you not see the damage a filter like this could do to young people???' Viewers were also upset under the comment section of Lola Tung's video. Commenters pointed out that the actress, who is biracial, appeared more European after having the filter applied. 'Good to know having a perfect face means erasing any feature that isn't white,' one user wrote. But where does it come from? The perfect face template is based on the 'Golden Ratio', which dates back to Ancient Greece and which is supposedly a mathematically accurate formula for beauty. It's basically an attempt to measure attractiveness through facial symmetry. However, this Euro-centric beauty ideal often doesn't fit many different faces and (quite literally) doesn't make room for unique features. This can be incredibly problematic, especially if it's part of media women are regularly consuming. For more stories like this subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The Weekly Gulp, for a curated roundup of trending stories, poignant interviews, and viral lifestyle picks from The Mirror's Audience U35 team delivered straight to your inbox. Saffron Hughes, a make-up artist at believes these videos can have a detrimental impact on women's self esteem. She says: 'These 'perfect face' edits might look slick on TikTok, but they're a fast track to making people feel like they're not good enough. As a makeup artist, I work with women every day who already feel under pressure to look a certain way, and this just adds fuel to the fire.' She adds: 'You're taking real faces and editing them to fit a mould that doesn't actually exist in real life. Even the celebrities being edited wouldn't recognise themselves. It pushes this idea that beauty has to mean flawless skin, high cheekbones, big eyes, a tiny nose, and anything outside of that doesn't measure up.'
AU Financial Review
17-07-2025
- AU Financial Review
The must-book new restaurants to dine at this August
While Australians shelter from the winter cold and the occasional rain bomb, Europe is basking in the full glare of high summer. But if you've neglected to book a jaunt to the northern hemisphere this year, Australia's dining scene can at least take your tastebuds on a trip to the continent, courtesy of these Euro-centric openings.
The Age
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Ormeggio team opens Vineria Luisa in Enmore with a focus on G&Ts and ‘best ever' lasagne
Regional Italian cooking rules at Vineria Luisa, the next chapter in Anna and Alessandro Pavoni's inner-west expansion. Previous SlideNext Slide With a facade that's barely been touched for 70 years, the former home of Marie-Louise Salon – and more recently Bar Louise from the Porteno team – will attract all eyes in Enmore this week when Anna and Alessandro Pavoni will relaunch the iconic inner-west site as Vineria Luisa. The downstairs bar at Luisa, on Enmore Road, opens today, followed by the first-floor dining room on Thursday. It's equal parts vineria and gintoneria, and Alessandro Pavoni says they've tapped the gin boom happening in Italy over the past decade, with gin from around the globe, gin-based cocktails and house-made tonics, not to mention a 'Euro-centric' wine list. But it's food Pavoni is best known for, with a growing stable of venues that sweep Ormeggio at The Spit, a'Mare at Crown Sydney and Postino Osteria in nearby Summer Hill. Pavoni says he's flexing some Italian muscle and exploring new territory with Vineria Luisa's opening menu. Buoyed by the adventurousness of locals at Postino Osteria, where tripe is a popular headline ingredient, Vineria Luisa will push the gondola out further on offal by way of tonnarelli with chicken giblets, heart, liver and tomato sugo. The chef describes the pasta as 'fashionable in Rome'. Meanwhile, the frittatina of spaghetti alla nerano is a dish seldom seen in Sydney. Eggs are added to day-old pasta with zucchini and the resulting frittata is finished with provolone cream and more zucchini. Also: strudel. 'Nobody does strudel in Italian restaurants, but you find it in the north of Italy,' says Pavoni, describing it as lighter than the strudels common to Central Europe. The dessert menu will also travel closer to the toe of Italy's boot with a Sicilian almond gelato infused with orange oil. There's still plenty of familiarity on the opening menu, however, and Pavoni is backing the 'best ever' lasagne to be a Vineria Luisa favourite. 'Not too dry, not too wet,' he said. The pothole of lasagne failings, he says, is using meat that's too lean. Other dishes include tuna crudo with pickled onion and cannellini beans; a wild greens pie with roots in Emilia-Romagna; and salted and fried ling fish cooked in sugo with pine nuts and sultanas. When the Pavonis and long-term business partner Bill Drakopoulos acquired the Enmore Road site in March, it had already undergone a sizeable renovation, so a major refit wasn't required. Drakopoulos' interior designer son Perry Drakopoulos was brought in to give the space a 'more feminine' edge, though. 'Perry had recently done (Greek restaurant) Akti at Woolloomooloo,' says Anna Pavoni. 'He's grown up in hospo, and has done a great job,' There are now frilly skirts on the chairs, which are painted mocha brown on the ground level and green upstairs. Perry Drakopoulos says the room, with its booths and hidden corners, is 'mafia in an elegant way.' Spot the Frank Sinatra album cover on one of the walls.
Sydney Morning Herald
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Ormeggio team opens Vineria Luisa in Enmore with a focus on G&Ts and ‘best ever' lasagne
Regional Italian cooking rules at Vineria Luisa, the next chapter in Anna and Alessandro Pavoni's inner-west expansion. Previous SlideNext Slide With a facade that's barely been touched for 70 years, the former home of Marie-Louise Salon – and more recently Bar Louise from the Porteno team – will attract all eyes in Enmore this week when Anna and Alessandro Pavoni will relaunch the iconic inner-west site as Vineria Luisa. The downstairs bar at Luisa, on Enmore Road, opens today, followed by the first-floor dining room on Thursday. It's equal parts vineria and gintoneria, and Alessandro Pavoni says they've tapped the gin boom happening in Italy over the past decade, with gin from around the globe, gin-based cocktails and house-made tonics, not to mention a 'Euro-centric' wine list. But it's food Pavoni is best known for, with a growing stable of venues that sweep Ormeggio at The Spit, a'Mare at Crown Sydney and Postino Osteria in nearby Summer Hill. Pavoni says he's flexing some Italian muscle and exploring new territory with Vineria Luisa's opening menu. Buoyed by the adventurousness of locals at Postino Osteria, where tripe is a popular headline ingredient, Vineria Luisa will push the gondola out further on offal by way of tonnarelli with chicken giblets, heart, liver and tomato sugo. The chef describes the pasta as 'fashionable in Rome'. Meanwhile, the frittatina of spaghetti alla nerano is a dish seldom seen in Sydney. Eggs are added to day-old pasta with zucchini and the resulting frittata is finished with provolone cream and more zucchini. Also: strudel. 'Nobody does strudel in Italian restaurants, but you find it in the north of Italy,' says Pavoni, describing it as lighter than the strudels common to Central Europe. The dessert menu will also travel closer to the toe of Italy's boot with a Sicilian almond gelato infused with orange oil. There's still plenty of familiarity on the opening menu, however, and Pavoni is backing the 'best ever' lasagne to be a Vineria Luisa favourite. 'Not too dry, not too wet,' he said. The pothole of lasagne failings, he says, is using meat that's too lean. Other dishes include tuna crudo with pickled onion and cannellini beans; a wild greens pie with roots in Emilia-Romagna; and salted and fried ling fish cooked in sugo with pine nuts and sultanas. When the Pavonis and long-term business partner Bill Drakopoulos acquired the Enmore Road site in March, it had already undergone a sizeable renovation, so a major refit wasn't required. Drakopoulos' interior designer son Perry Drakopoulos was brought in to give the space a 'more feminine' edge, though. 'Perry had recently done (Greek restaurant) Akti at Woolloomooloo,' says Anna Pavoni. 'He's grown up in hospo, and has done a great job,' There are now frilly skirts on the chairs, which are painted mocha brown on the ground level and green upstairs. Perry Drakopoulos says the room, with its booths and hidden corners, is 'mafia in an elegant way.' Spot the Frank Sinatra album cover on one of the walls.
Los Angeles Times
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
To understand what immigrants mean to California, eat at any restaurant
Taquerias, dim sum parlors, sushi counters, noodle shops, kebab stands, strip malls filled with businesses serving 12 different Vietnamese specialties: Immigrant excellence powers every single restaurant on the L.A. Times' first ever 101 best restaurants in California guide. Without exception. Even in the white-owned places serving Euro-centric dishes, who is doing the cooking or delivering the plates to the table? I see the greatness of immigrant contributions to our dining culture everywhere. Given the past week in Los Angeles, amid the accelerated immigration raids and anti-ICE protests, and the many obfuscations across social media and national coverage in their portrayals of L.A. and Angelenos, it feels important to say plainly: The top-to-bottom glory of culinary California feeds and influences the nation and the world, and it would not exist without our immigrants. That's reflected in our new statewide 101 essential restaurants project, which went live this morning. This list isn't full of super-secret, 'undiscovered' amazements hidden in the furthest regions of the state. No. It's built from fantastic restaurants of all kinds — the standouts, telling a collective story about who we are and what we eat. Did I rank them? No, though of course I'm aware plenty of people crave stars and status to argue over. The No. 1 reason to take the time to read over the guide is to see that, in the spirit of usefulness, the 101 restaurants are jumping-off points. There is too much brilliance to highlight at every level in California. So along with many of the write-ups, you'll find 'extra helpings' of restaurants similar in style or cuisine or geography. For instance, you might glance down the list of places in San Francisco — the U.S. capital of fine dining, full-stop — and say, 'These are out of my budget!' Keep reading, and you'll see I've also included more affordable dining recommendations in the city. Eating well in California has outgrown simplistic notions of perfect fruit on a plate. For almost 50 years, the architects of the modern California-wide dining culture drove the ethos of 'seasonal' and 'local' into eye-glazing cliches, and we know who farms all our beautiful produce. But over the last decade, the foods of the state's longest-standing immigrant communities — Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Filipino and Middle Eastern, among others — have become engines of creativity for a new generation of chefs cooking from their heritage. At the stove, each person could choose to hue close to tradition or veer wildly into innovation. Someone could re-create their grandmother's pozole, another could infuse the dish's broth with Asian herbs and garnish it with edible flowers. If it was delicious, it found an audience. It was a big element when, in the early 2010s, media and food lovers finally began acknowledging Los Angeles on the world map as a dining destination. That approach — it can go by 'third culture cuisine' or 'identity-based cooking' — is no less thrilling these days, but it's become a welcome part of our culinary consciousness. The reaction isn't so much, 'Whoa, this take on mapo tofu is wild' as it is, 'Ah, this is what you bring.' It's the closest I have to a modern, working definition of the overly broad term 'California cuisine.' Staying in John says, 'I was thinking about leaving a promising career in the corporate world working 50-60 hours a week to become a teacher. My dad asked me why. One reason was that I would be able to spend more time with my kids. He was retired from a job where he worked 50-60 hours a week and said that he wished he had worked less because he missed out on so much of my and my siblings' lives. He told me to never put work before family like he had done.' Katie says, 'I grew up in Washington, DC, and was lucky to have a father who loved to take me out to eat at all kinds of restaurants. My father taught me from a very young age to always read the dessert menu first, so you could plan your meal accordingly.' Email us at essentialcalifornia@ and your response might appear in the newsletter this week. On June 12, 1967, the Loving vs. Virginia decision deemed bans on interracial marriage unconstitutional. In recent years, the anniversary of that decision has been informally celebrated by multiracial families across the country. In 2016, The Times invited readers to share their Loving Day stories and how interracial relationships have affected them. Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorAndrew Campa, Sunday writerKarim Doumar, head of newsletters How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on
