Filtered, fake images have warped our perception of ’normal’
HOW do we strive for perfection, when our perception on what perfection is, is based on fake “beauty” created by filters and photo-editing?
When I scroll through my Instagram and see all these young girls, their faces plastered with layers of make-up and contoured beyond recognition, it infuriates me.
The fact that they are not embracing their youthful appearance that the older women strive for, is saddening.
Growing up my reference of what “beautiful” was came from fashion magazines. Light skin, sleek hair and skinny was “beautiful”.
Even then, women understood that it wasn’t the norm. As much as they aspired to be those girls in the magazines, they knew that that wasn’t true for all women.
Back then an image was captured by a camera loaded with film. A photograph was something you could hold in your hands and place in an actual album. A photograph was a mirror image of yourself. It was real.
Now all you have to do is pull out your phone and snap away. Camera phones are so amazing these days that before you even take a picture your image is already distorted.
My pet peeve is the automatic beauty filter that comes up when I want to take a selfie.
The desire to constantly look flawless has become so great that mobile phone manufacturers have created cameras that by default “beautify” your face and give you that smooth, wrinkle-free complexion.
Once you’ve taken the already manipulated picture, you can further edit it to achieve whatever look you want.
After that you take that automatically “beautified” picture that has been edited and then alter it even more by adding a few filters that will have you looking like an airbrushed illustration.
By the time girls are finally happy with the completely distorted image of themselves they are still anxious about posting it on their social media pages.
I mean, that’s why you went through all that drama to “perfect” the image right? It’s all for the ’gram!
These completely distorted, edited and filtered images have become what’s now perceived to be “beautiful”.
Now it’s in our heads that that is how we’re meant to be looking.
It boggles my mind that people today aspire to look like digitallyenhanced beings.
So to look like the pictures in these social media pages, people are actually making physical changes.
Botox, fillers, plastic surgery have become “normal” because that’s how you get to look like the people on Instagram.
Even after all the aesthetic procedures people will still edit their images before posting them online.
This vicious cycle has created a generation of girls whose sense of self is so far removed from reality that when they look in the mirror they are unable to see their natural beauty.
All they see is a face or body that doesn’t look like the ones online.
Girls are now hating themselves for not looking fake and when they go out of their way to achieve that look, they are frowned on for being fake.
We’ve already witnessed the birth of AI fashion models. Soon people will not be able to distinguish between what’s real and not.
Unless society breaks this vicious cycle of unrealistic and fake beauty norms, our daughters will be less and less happy with the face they see in the mirror because as humans we will continue to bring real beings into the world.