Snapchat and Instagram filters help us present our best face to the world. But can we really call it ours? They smooth our skin, ridding us of any imperfections and redness, while giving us fuller lips and bigger eyes; all of which fall in line with western beauty standards. And as anyone who regularly scrolls through their social media feeds will attest to - filters, be it a flower crown or animal faced - are everywhere, used by celebrities and ordinary folk alike.
Before the digital era, altered photographs were traditionally reserved for models and celebrities in advertisements or magazines. Now, anyone can enhance their features in an attempt to resemble Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner - or any woman that is currently heralded as the paragon of female attractiveness. There is much discussion about how this could be negatively impacting our self-esteem, and even leading to issues such as body dysmorphic disorder.
According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, body dysmorphia is a body image disorder "characterised by persistent and intrusive preoccupations with an imagined or slight defect in one’s appearance".
And Dr Matthew Schulman, a board-certified plastic surgeon based in New York, has said that patients are even bringing filtered selfies to their plastic surgeons as inspiration for what they're looking to achieve. One doctor went so far to refer to this phenomenon as "Snapchat Dysmorphia".
Certainly, while patients used to ask for Angelina Jolie's lips or Cameron Diaz's nose, they're now showing their plastic surgeons their filtered Instagram posts. "Everybody basically is using a filter on their own and they’re either taking that next step to bring it to me saying, ‘Hey, this is what I want to look like," Schulman said. "Not everyone is going that far, but in their head, that’s what they want to look like and then they’re coming to me and saying I want smoother skin, I want my eyes to be opened up, I want my lips to be fuller. You kind of have those two groups of people."
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One of the filters that Schulman sees most are the ones that smooth and blur the skin."People are using that as an example of what they want their skin to look like, which basically means they want to get rid of irregular pigmentation and they want to soften fine lines and wrinkles," he continued.
Some have even argued that Snapchat and Instagram filters might be making us forget what we actually look like. Professor of psychology at Northwestern University, Renee Engeln, asserted: "There’s an issue with losing perspective on what you actually look like, and it’s not something we talk about much".
"It’s not enough [to] compare yourself to these perfected images of models, but now you’ve got this daily comparison of your real self to this intentional or unintentional fake self that you present on social media. It’s just one more way to feel like your falling short every day".
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Engeln sums up cogently, albeit rather depressingly, "You are never going to meet this culture’s beauty standard. If we all started meeting the standard, the standard would just be changed."
