Enter Tiktok’s Bold Glamour: what fresh filter hell is this?

SORRY TO GO IN on a bald expletive, but F**K ME. ARE YOU F**KING KIDDING ME WITH THIS NEW TIKTOK FILTER? Bold Glamour uses AI to dramatically alter the appearance of those using it – to raise cheekbones, shave flesh off jaws, widen eyes and otherwise ensure it conforms with some f**king algorithm’s idea of physical beauty. And it’s so… I was going to say ‘good’ at it, but that implies approval, while I have none, so let’s go with: ‘cruelly competent’. It’s so cruelly competent, no one can tell if they’re looking at filtered images or a person who’s mush naturally looks like a robot programmed by a Kardashian’s idea of pretty. Is this how the movement to diversify beauty ends? With machine-generated homogeneity? Is unreality the new reality? God, I’m so tired.

Inevitably, Bold Glamour is f**king up the teenage girl demographic at whom it’s squarely aimed. If, at an age when you’re unsure of every last aspect of yourself, when you’re mired, new-boobs-deep, in confusion, if at that precise point you run your face (the sweet, tentative, wonderful, imperfect outward-facing representation of you – your shopfront) through a program designed to identify what’s ‘wrong’ with it, by correcting it… How could that not cause harm? How could that not make you think unfiltered, offline you is unpalatable, unacceptable, unbearably ugly?

This is not even to say being f**ked up by the filters is the unique preserve of the younglings. Of course it hits hardest, most desperately then, but honestly? Some of the filtering my mates indulge in on Insta is painful. The tools at their disposal may not be as total a face f **kover as Bold Glamour, essentially because they’re less sophisticated, therefore, more obvious, but I’m nonetheless stunned by the fakery of some grown ass friends’ selfies. The dress sizes (two at a time) removed, the complexions smoothed into submission, the enlarged lips, the cheeks, hoisted upwards by clumsy digital contouring. Who are they trying to kid? Those of us who know them IRL, familiar with (/fond of ) their chubby cheeks, their hooded eyes, their actual bods? Can’t be. Which means it must be themselves they’re trying to kid.

Which is so sad.

I am by no means opposed to a little artifice. I’ve devoted my life to pursuing (offline) glamour. I Botox, I microblade my brows, I dress up to take the dog for a walk. I spent lockdown on Youtube beauty tutorials – and I’m glad I did, rather than, say, re-read The Classics: my new skills with concealer are paying off in a way I’m not sure reacquaintance with Our Mutual Friend would. But, for the sake of your heart and your head, there’s got to be some basic truth in that made-up mix! Some cake under all the icing! Me? I maintain a desire that people who know my Instagram feed should not be taken aback if they meet me IRL; I filter accordingly.