You used to be able to give yourself dog ears or a different hair color with a fun filter. Those times have changed: nowadays beauty filters are realistic, confrontational and, according to many, very unhealthy. Some new filters now even go one step further. And that worries a lot of people.
“This filter should be illegal.” It is written in block letters on the video that the young woman @notsophiesilva posts on video app TikTok. She looks beautiful, made up but not too much, with full lips and accentuated eyes. She rubs her face roughly with her hands: nothing has changed at all. Until she turns off the filter she was apparently using. There’s her real face: nude, make-upless, less femme fatale.
LOOK. “This filter should be illegal”: the reactions of Tiktokkers to the new filter do not lie
It is a shock to many when they see what the new filter, called ‘Bold Glamour’, is capable of. Whatever you do, nothing at all in the video indicates that your appearance has been artificially perfected. “You used to see such a beauty filter jump when your hair came in front of your eyes or you put your hand in front of your face. But this one doesn’t,” notes a surprised @jera.bean. “Filters are really evolving.”
“My uncertainty is skyrocketing”
According to figures from TikTok, 470,000 videos have already been made with the new filter. Everyone is curious, until they notice how the filter makes them feel. “This is not healthy,” @meghan__lane__ keeps repeating, rubbing her face. “This is not healthy. My insecurity is going to skyrocket,” she says before switching off the filter. When she sees her real face again, she quickly looks away.
What matters is that the eerily powerful filter is also very credible at the same time, warns plastic surgeon Monica Kieu (@drmonicakieu) on TikTok. “Your skin is smoother, your eyebrows thicker, your eyelashes longer. Your eyes look bigger and your eyeballs whiter. Your nose and cheeks look slimmer and your lips look bigger. No surgery is needed: you could make your face look exactly the same with good make-up and good lighting.”
The question is: if everyone looks so beautiful and perfect online, in such a realistic way, will we still be able to be happy with what we see in the mirror at home? Or will we crave that pretty face everyone seems to have online?
Would you rather look a lot younger, fresh and wrinkle-free? That is now also possible
‘Bold Glamour’ isn’t the only filter that worries many users. Her sister, called ‘Teenage Face’, is just as hyper-realistic. Only she transforms your face into a younger teenage version of yourself. With smooth, fresh skin, slim cheeks, zero wrinkles or impurities. Meanwhile, more than 1.7 million TikTok users have already tested the transformation. For many from the innocent nostalgia for their younger selves.
We will see more and more technologies like this. We’re going to have to be really critical of what’s real online and what’s not.
And yet. “This filter is so disturbing,” said well-known influencer Danae Mercer in a video. “Technology is getting so smart. Look how realistic this looks,” she says, pressing her face. “We will see technologies like this more and more. We will have to be really critical of what is real online and what is not.” Otherwise, our self-esteem will suffer, predicts Mercer. “And it’s also so dangerous to put a young girl’s face on a grown woman’s body.”
Psychiatrist: “Because that beautiful image is so realistic, its attraction is even greater”
For many, the hyper-realistic filters are a signal that social media is going in the wrong direction. Along with the rise of deepfake videos — in which one person’s face is seamlessly pasted onto another’s body — it seems that it will soon be very difficult to know who is real online. “This is the end of social media,” someone predicts on a hacker forum. “If everything online becomes so fake, it will be time to get back to real life.”
The impact of such beauty filters was alarming even before they were so realistic. A 2019 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association showed that such filters increased user interest in cosmetic surgery. Instagram then decided to intervene, even if they only decided to ban the filters that were reminiscent of such cosmetic procedures.
I expect this will hurt people, both healthy young people and someone already struggling with body dysmorphia.
The filters also set off alarm bells at psychiatrist Nienke Vulink, at the Amsterdam University Medical Centers. She specializes in body dysmorphia of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), a condition that affects 1 in 100 people. They are convinced of abnormalities in their appearance, while these are not present or only to a limited extent. “This morning I already talked about it with colleagues: so scary that you no longer notice that you are looking at a filter. I expect this could hurt people, both healthy young people and someone already with BDD struggles. Such a person thinks: ‘If I also look this beautiful, I will be happier.’ Because that image is so realistic, its attraction is only greater.”
“We know from research that healthy people who look at photos of themselves with filters often feel negative emotions afterwards. Also the phenomenon of ‘snapchat dysmorphia’ already appeared in semi-scientific literature: all those edited selfies make some strive for an unrealistic image of beauty. These filters seem like a next, very risky step in that.”
The signals that our idea of beauty is becoming less and less realistic are already there. Recently, actress Emilia Clarke (36) received a lot of criticism for a natural selfie she posted, with laugh lines. “Well, she looks like she ran into a wall. Aging beautifully is different,” someone commented under the photo. “This is why you wear sunscreen,” wrote another. Who knows, it will be very scary to ever post a photo without a filter again.
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