It has been reported that Princesses of Selfie Land, Kylie and Kendall Jenner use the app Perfect365 to edit their photos. Although I’m hesitant to believe that they need an app to edit their photos considering they have a glamsquad doing them up on the regular, I couldn’t resist the thought of a Kylie quality selfie.
I figured I would take a quick selfie, try it out, and move on with my life. Except Selfie Land sucked me in, and I couldn’t stop. Perfect365 doesn’t just change the coloring of a photo and hide some of your skin blemishes with a filter. Instead it allows you to make your nose thinner, lips bigger, face skinnier, and define your cheekbones. As if that’s not overwhelming enough, you can also change your eye shape, brighten your eye color, and add makeup. In the palm of my fingertips I had the ability to give myself plastic surgery.
Originally, I was laughing as I edited these selfies because HELLO I looked absurd (see above). My lips were huge, my face was so thin, I looked nothing like myself. I started to take more photos doing different poses, and suddenly I spent 45 minutes on this ridiculous app. My roommate even got sucked in, and we were texting the results to one another.
The more I began to compare the before and after photo, the more I began to wish I had some of the qualities I was giving myself with Perfect365. I’ve always known that my face is shaped as round as a soccer ball, and I’ve embraced it (all my round-face-shaped girls, holla!). But after seeing what my face could look like if it were thin, I was sort of pissed at my round face and I wanted it to be thinner. Then I realized how much better my lips look when they’re bigger and I was like hey, maybe lip injections are in my future. I started to wish I looked more like imaginary Danielle and started hating on real life Danielle.
Unrealistic beauty standards used to be seen in magazines and on television. But as millennial collegiettes, we deal with the stress of perfection even on our cell phones. The piece of technology that we look at before we fall asleep, when we wakeup, and that we carry around with us everywhere we go is filled with unrealistic photographs floating around on Twitter and Instagram. We are constantly carrying the weight of perfection both literally and emotionally.
When was the last time you saw a picture on Instagram and thought she is stunning, I want to look like that? I’m willing to bet it was recently, for me it was about an hour ago. How much of that beautiful photograph is real, though? Perhaps said girl on Instagram is a user of Perfect365 or a similar app. I’m not saying that all photos are enhanced, but most people aren’t going to post a photo of themselves on social media that they think is less than perfect.
There is a good chance that a photo you’ve felt envious over has been edited in some way, and that’s okay. What isn’t okay though, is this vicious cycle that we’re in. The girl that you want to look like probably enhanced her photo because she wanted to look as good as someone she saw on Instagram, and that person enhanced their photo because they wanted to be as hot as another person on Instagram, and it goes on and on.
I wanted to look like Kylie Jenner, so I was enhancing my lips and my face shape. I’m sure Kylie Jenner has wanted to look like her big sister Kim Kardashian, so she enhances her lips to resemble Kim’s. We’re all stuck in a cycle of wanting to look like anyone but ourselves that we forget that we each have awesome features of our own.
You know the thing people always compliment you on, but you don’t care because you’re worrying about what you don’t have? For instance, I get compliments (as weird as it may be) from my roommates about my nose. I guess I have a nice nose, but I’m always hung up on the fact that I don’t have big lips. We don’t give ourselves enough credit, or enough compliments for what we do have. The more I think about it, I am actually afraid of the girl that I created with Perfect365. That girl isn’t me and I will never be that girl.
Let’s forget about what we don’t have, and rock what we do have. You deserve to post all of the selfies in the world, girl. Even better than looking like Kylie or Kendall Jenner, you’ll look like you.
Original photo to the left, edited photo on the right.