The media has controlled women’s bodies and appearance since its beginning, by creating standards of beauty that are totally unattainable. As a result, with the emergence of new technologies, content consumption now happens through social networks and digital platforms. Instagram is the fourth most downloaded and used app in the world and also the place where we constantly share carefully selected parts of our liver with our followers.
According to student Marina Ramos (15), society has always had strong beauty standards, so things such as having straight hair, being tall and thin have become something necessary for you to be considered “good” enough.
“Being able to follow all this stereotypes created by the media is not impossible, but I believe it is something totally sickening and sad to do with yourself. Each and every one has their own feaures and is beautiful in their own way. This is what makes us all different and unique. Trying to become something that you are not, only for others to “accept” you, is terrible, because nothing is worth your mental health “, says Marina.
The Administrator Tath Julie (27) reinforces that thought, and explains that “with technology and medical advances, in addition to the increasingly unattainable standards, they are being modified with even greater frequency. Every day, we see and hear about new procedures appearing in the market”. Thus, in opposition to the body positive movement and the prohibition of extremely edited photos in magazines, the new sensation of social networks emerged: Instagram filters.
Although they started as a fun and harmless way to “dress up”, with dog ears, kitten whiskers and fun glasses, it wasn’t long until effects started to completely transform our faces, enlarging our mouths, narrowing our noses, pulling our eyes and making up our skins. As a result, everyone started to look the same.
“People are becoming copies of each other. Today, with my clients, I don’t intend to transform them, but they have already been mentally transformed by the standards that we, beauty professionals, are responsible for. I do not advise anyone to have aesthetic standards. I am really worried when I meet a girl client who is constantly transforming, paralyzing wrinkles or enlarging her lips. It is a standard imposed by our society. I’m really very careful now and I try to offer care, not a transformation of your beauty “, explains the beautician Edy Guimarães (64).
About filters, Edy adds: “Although I use these filters, they are not positive. Every time I play with them and I find myself taking a photograph without a filter afterwards, I don’t see myself. And then I instantly decide to distort my own image. You will never see a person on Instagram as they are anymore. Even filters that only give you freckles, which I find cute, are already creating a pattern. Freckles are for those with freckles. We’re mixing reality with fantasy”.
The information around this subject is completely frightening and shows that filters are really not harmless. A recent phenomenon called “Snapchat dysmorphia” has shown that a large number of young American women are taking plastic surgeons using pictures of themselves with filters, saying that is how they want to look.
This craving for a computerized and unreal appearance can present physical and psychological risks to generations that are native to the Internet. Each time more often, we see depression and low self-esteem linked to young people, and dissatisfaction with their own image has become almost a feature of new teenagers.
Architecture student Isabella Ferreira (18) believes that the media shows and praises female icons with thick lips and thin cheeks, for example, which makes other women wanting to feel the same and ending up doing procedures and using filters only to fit into a pattern. “I didn’t see it as a negative thing until I realized that whenever I was going to record something, I put some filter on. I think that these filters shape our image, leading to the standard of beauty imposed by the media and society and that is why we use them so much“. – says Isabella
In the opinion of Tath Julie, “every beauty standard contributes to the development of emotional illnesses. The image disorder, which was previously seen and related to an eating disorder, is migrating to aesthetic procedures. Especially when it comes to filling the lips, it usually starts with only a little amount and, over the months, you will notice a significant and disproportionate change to the person’s natural features“.
In response to this, in order to make Instagram a more positive and user-friendly platform, the company announced in October 2019 that it would remove all filters that look like plastic surgery and stopped approving the launch of new filters of the same type. In addition, an update was launched that makes it possible to report filters and effects that may be a violation of the social network usage policies.
So, from now on, let’s use social media to highlight the positive and individual side of each one of us and not to mask reality. We need to be aware of those filters, understand that they are not real and, with that in mind, accept our own inner and outter beauty – which exists, with or without filters on.
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The article above was edited by Giulia Gianolla.
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