04/ WHY DO I FEEL PRETTIER?
Mapping the hidden alteration of perfectionist beauty filters
Perfectionist beauty filters are sponsoring a specific face leading to a normalization of facial alterations
Female beauty standards reachable only by processes of digital or physical manipulation have always been with us. If before it was only about celebrities, now everyone is able to access digital alterations easily and in real time: contemporary tools of visual self-transmission have created new disciplines of beauty self-improvement. In particular the more traditional AR filters, instead of break conformist beauty standards, keep playing on our imperfections by emphasizing our unhealthy relationship with beauty: encouraging the internalization of unrealistic expectations.
"Fifty-five percent of surgeons reported seeing patients who requested surgery that would improve them on selfies, often citing their 'Instagram faces' as a preferred starting point."
2019 – according to findings of an online survey study published in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery.
Creating an homogeneous face in a subtle way
The main goal of these filters is to beautify user’s faces readjusting individual shapes to fit a strait, specific and restricting standard. The modifications happens in an implicit, silent, and subtle way. The titles of the filters remain generic, not describing the totality of alterations that are affecting the subject. The visualization wants to show the inconsistency between title and filters and the overall effect of an homogeneous anesthetized aesthetic with recurring alterations.
The unreachable anonymous Instagram model
The types of changes applied presents constants in most cases. The nose is reduced, becoming thin and narrow, while lips, on the contrary, are plumped up. The eyes are enlarged and slightly raised at the end, frequently applying fake eyelashes. The face overall is slimmed and the skin smoothed.
"There are constants: symmetry, proportion, harmony and when you look at Kim, Megan Fox, Lucy Liu, Halle Berry, you'll always find commonalities."
The New Yorker – The Age of Instagram Face
This face also characterized by an ambiguous origin: It’s a racially indefinable appearance that selects the most aesthetically pleasing elements of different racial profiles presenting itself as a mix of different cultures with singularities that are difficult to find all in one face:
"We're talking about an overly tanned skin tone, a South Asian influence with the eyebrows and eye shape, an African American influence with the lips, a Caucasian influence with the nose, a cheek texture that is predominantly Native American and Middle Eastern."
The New Yorker – The Age of Instagram Face
This face, which is the result of a studied combination, is spreading the ambition to achieve an unattainable look. The user in real life would be strongly dependent on fillers and plastic surgery procedures.
Without Instagram, this specific aspect would not be so common and familiar. The social network has helped to the spread of it among a generation of young users: despite the over modification, many of them keep showing digital altered pictures on instagram. Maybe it helps to reach an unattainable standard for a moment.
