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Recently, I got a new cellphone to review. After I had gone through a couple of its features, I accessed the front camera and took a selfie. When I saw the result, I couldn't believe my eyes. I looked like, well, a buttermilk biscuit with eyes. Was the camera broken? Had a co-worker played a trick on me and spread butter over the lens? Nope, it was the beauty filter, enabled by default. Had I asked for it? No. Do I look better as a nebulous figure? Maybe, on Halloween. There's a bigger issue here, though.
Being enabled by default, manufacturers obviously expect the majority of customers to use this "beauty" setting. And they're right. A brief look at download charts from various app stores reveals beautification apps are on billions of devices. It's not just zits that are masked out and edited but everything from double chins to entire facial structures. There are specialized apps to alter body shapes, e.g. take some weight off or add a bunch of curves. Advertising texts are painfully honest: "Be who you always wanted to be!", at least in pixel form. Pixels are forgiving, reality is not.
I got a call from a friend, he needed to talk. He had come across a young lady on Tinder and intended to meet up with her. He admitted he had uploaded rather favorable and slightly edited pictures of himself and sent them to me as proof, expecting me to find them moderately flattering but still somewhat true to reality. When they finally met, or rather tried to meet, a minor problem arose: they didn't recognize each other. A phone call cleared things up - and revealed the sobering truth. The night was over quickly and utterly devoid of romance. Once the prominent Casanova turns into an ordinary office clerk and the seductive princess into the girl next door, disappointment is guaranteed. They simply didn't fit the images they had painted of themselves beforehand.
An app for the perfect selfie
What may sound like another case of harmless horseplay in our modern society can have disastrous consequences for our younger generations. Especially during a phase of their lives when they pay more attention to idols and celebrities than to their parents, or to any adult for that matter. But peer pressure is increasing. While our idols did have their visual flaws, today, the bar is set considerably higher. Photoshop takes care of what rigorous physical training and special diets can't remedy. Naturally, this also affects magazine pictures that have to be individually greenlit by management before they too go to press or online. This results in high-res 4K images of unpadded immaculate bodies free from wrinkles or any other visual flaws. It's every dermatologist's dream.
But it's not real. Humans usually aren't cast or match the appearance of supermodels. It's this visual divide that sends so many children and teenagers into despair. A friend of mine, a psychotherapist, told me about the ramifications caused by "digital perfection". Every day, she sees dozens of young men and women who starve themselves, work out like crazy, regularly compare weights and even cause self-inflicted harm if they fail to meet the goals they set for themselves. Elementary students are also among her clientele. Students that long for beauty surgery, 12 year-olds with heavy make-up and small boys that would love to get their hands on steroids to stimulate muscle growth. Many of them carry photos and glossy prints of their idols and have very exact ideas of what they want to look like and do. I'm not talking about Hollywood, these kids live in a major German city. I'll admit I was oblivious to this until now.
Posing like the pros
The delusion of perfection has gotten to the point that it spawned a new genre of magazines that show and celebrate stars without digital makeovers. Every wrinkle, every ounce of extra weight and every bit of cellulite. It's a minor alleviation for tortured souls. But change is coming, if slowly. A small number of beauty companies have begun to try their luck with unaltered images and educators are already arguing the case for warning messages like "Warning, this photo was digitally altered and does not reflect the truth" to accompany the affected media. Until then, digital perfection will continue to dominate magazines and websites. I've now disabled the beauty filter and brought back my wrinkles so that, instead of a smooth and polished sculpture, I once again look like the mid-forty human being that I am. That's life, that's reality.
What I would like to know: Do you consider warning messages that accompany digitally altered images a good idea? Or do we as a society have to learn to better cope with deceiving appearances?
I think thees altered mages should have a warning label on them as young kids try to emulate what s a hairy fairy picture and get all messed up in the head and end up jumping of a bridge or something.
When you can take a photo of a wrinkled old bag lady and it turns out looking like a catwalk model then i think some teenagers are going to have mental problems.
Deceiving appearance-Deceiving slogans-Deceiving politics-Deceiving elections-Deceiving Leaders-Deceiving!
No excuse for that both in real or virtual.
Wishing you all: Santa Not Deceiving you ! :-)
Tinder, like virtue, is its own reward.
It is funny how social media is making us more socially retarded.
Hi Sven,
On a regular occasion there an interesting 'blog' from you, thank you!
'Super Models', how ridiculous, there are female models and male models, just as there are no 'Super Stars'.
Why do promoters, el al think that 'super' in front of a persons trade makes them 'better', so let us put make-up on plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, cab drivers and thousands of other trades people and add ' Super' to their trade name.
Make-up, Fake-up is more like it, as with computer enhancing a person's face beyond recognition of even their parents.
Fortunately, honest tradespeople don't need facial and body enhancement 'Fakeation' to provide a necessary service to benefit the community and their clients,
Models on catwalks showing new clothes, models on TV showing make-up and shampoo products covered in 'Fakeness' are not producing much of anything to benefit mankind and removal would certainly not endanger our planet,
How sad that the self-importance of individuals who think that they impress others by hiding their true selves does the opposite when their true selves unfold.
If „super“ makes everything better, maybe I’d loop in marketing. „Super company makes super software“. :)
At my age, 75, I am more concerned about what I look like on the inside than what I look like on the outside.
At just 45, I already consider my inner values more important than my outward appearance. :)
I think we all need a good dose of reality. The quest for perfection is just an excuse to be fake. We should be trying to become better people not just better looking objects.
Deception is NEVER right!
Ah yes, the pursuit of beauty. It's been here since before the Romans. Not everyone can be so fortunate, but you can always wish can't you?
Superficial people looking for superficial ideals so they can be like the celebrities. You know, those people who live in the media who look so happy, are so beautiful and have lots of money and sex. This sort of tantalizing advertising began in America a century ago and has spread. People are drawn to desire to be good looking and rich, because once that is achieved, they can truly be (they think) happy. As long as they wish for this superficial state, they will continue to pursue the ideal and spend money, which helps the corporations thrive on their emotions.
So why should we be surprised with the digital age that we are in? Call it the Matrix or whatever, but it is a false reality, and happiness (satisfaction) will be forever elusive.
This has been the domain of politicians for some time. It is strange that people will take more notice of someone who looks beautiful and can sing though their heads are completely empty of any wisdom than they will of a learned plump bald old man!
Another very interesting and thought provoking article. Yes I believe it would be good to mandate warnings about digitally altered images on beauty and political images but on the other hand I am unsure about the further use of "red tape" in the crazy legalist PC world we live in!
Maybe outward appearances have become less relevant ever since Trump took office. After all, he’s anything but a looker. :)
I met the lady who was to become my wife in an Internet chatroom (this was in the 1990's). There was no enhancement software in those days, we emailed untouched pictures to each other and were scrupulously honest in our conversations. We are still married 20 years later. I think that if one goes by looks alone, a relationship won't last beyond a few months.
That’s a beautiful story! Maybe things would have worked out for my friend, had they both been a little more honest.
Why not just have it produce a picture of Fabian when you take a selfie? This would be just as honest. :-)
Great to see this issue being raised, it strikes me that it is high time that digitally altered images should no longer be permitted in either advertising or fashion. lets go back to the reality and stop pretending that humans can attain perfection.
I have no problem with images being edited as an art form, but pretending that a person is more pretty, better proportioned or more handsome is simply false representation and can lead to all the various problems where people harm themselves, undergo various "enhancements" or suffer dietary problems which you discuss. So unnecessary.
i am far too old to worry about my appearance and would never think about on line dating. I despair about the modern obsession with appearances and "celebrities". Selfies are an anathema.
"Edit recommendation: "greenlit by management before they TOO go to press or online" "
Surely the edit is to cut out the redundant "to".