Is Snapchat’s gender-swap filter seriously worrying or just silly fun?
You may remember Snapchat. The app used to be hugely popular and then suddenly became irrelevant. Thanks to its viral new gender-swapping filter, however, Snapchat is back. People are downloading the app in droves to see what they would look like as the opposite gender; even the (male) England Cricket team has got in on the action. (Honestly, if they all looked like that in real life, I would be the biggest cricket fan in the world.)
Anyway, I’ve always thought I would have made a very handsome man, so when I heard about the Snapchat filter I was quick to try it out. Well, “quick’” may not be the most accurate descriptor. Apparently, I am now “can’tuse-technology-years-old”; it took me an embarrassing amount of Googling and expletives to figure out how to download the gender-swapping function. After all that trouble I can’t tell you how upset I was to find out that male-me looks like a sex offender. An extremely disappointing result. While Snapchat’s new filter is a lot of silly fun, there’s a more serious side to it. For one thing, it shines a light on regressive gender norms. In Snapchat world, being an attractive “female” apparently means having long hair, long lashes, and very pale skin. Meanwhile, being a man means having a square jaw, short hair, thick eyebrows, and a beard. It’s somewhat ironic that an app that encourages you to play with gender has such a binary view of it. Then you’ve got the fact that some men have, apparently, been using photos of their female alter egos to see what life is like for women on Tinder. In some ways this is great: it lets men understand the extent to which women get harassed on dating apps. But the idea of “trapping” people into thinking you are a woman also veers into transphobic territory.
Is all of this overthinking what is simply meant to be a fun app? Maybe. However, we ought not to lose sight of the fact that while gender-swapping online might be a good laugh, people still get killed for doing it in real life.