Earlier this yr, I used to be scrolling through TikTok once I paused to look at a video of Kendall Jenner demonstrating her each day gua sha routine for Vogue. But what stopped my thumb in its tracks wasn’t the model extolling the virtues of a morning facial massage: I’m ashamed to confess it was the advantageous lines and texture on her brow, the visible pores and blackheads on her cheeks. Within the comments, others had made similar observations – albeit expressed in crueller terms. “I’ve never felt this good about myself,” one comment reads. “If I had her money, my skin would not look that bad,” says one other.
Jenner’s make-up-free skin within the Vogue video stood in stark contrast to the airbrushed, filtered, and Photoshopped images of the model that we normally see. But does her skin really look “bad” within the video? On reflection, Jenner’s skin just looks like… skin.
Evidently, largely due to the circulation of edited photos online, lots of us have forgotten what real skin actually looks like: pores, pockmarks, pimples and all. And never only is that this leading to cruel jibes at celebrities like Jenner – it’s also making us harsher on ourselves. Social media is brimming with posts from people – normally young women – desperately in search of ‘solutions’ to perceived skin issues. On the r/Skincare_Addiction subreddit, which has over 1.7 million members, users commonly ask questions on methods to improve their skin. “Is that this skin texture normal for a 22 yr old? I feel prefer it looks bad,” asks one young woman, attaching a photo of her (spotless) forehead. Similar queries are sometimes posted on TikTok. “Is it normal to have wrinkles under your eyes at 20?” asks one user as she zooms in on her under eye area.
Kushie Amin, 30, often obsesses over perceived flaws along with her skin. “I feel like I’ve had such a warped perception of my skin recently,” she says, explaining that she feels convinced she has uneven skin texture and hyperpigmentation – but others see things otherwise. “At any time when I’ve gone to beauty counters, the assistants say that my skin looks perfect. Then once I say that I’ve got hyperpigmentation, they only say they didn’t notice any.” She adds that she recently went right into a shop to purchase retinol, only to be told by the sales assistant that she didn’t need it. “These are individuals who should need to sell me products, and even they’re like, ‘I can’t really see what you’re seeing’.”
Amber Rawlings, 26, has had similar experiences. “This might sound like I’m blowing my very own trumpet, but I often have people tell me my skin is amazing,” she says. “But I just can’t see it.” She adds that she has spent “an insane amount of cash” on skincare products and has even seen a personal dermatologist up to now after an pimples flare-up. “But my friends were of the opinion that I never even needed to go to a dermatologist in the primary place and that my pimples, which I believed was absolutely awful, didn’t necessitate that sort of intervention.”
For years, magazines and advertisers have been manipulating photos of celebrities and models by airbrushing out imperfections and blurring away blackheads. But in recent times, ‘tweaking’ photos in this fashion has gone mainstream. Filters designed to smooth the looks of skin have emerged on social media apps like Instagram and TikTok, allowing anyone to digitally enhance photos of themselves in a single swift swipe. Notably, early last yr, TikTok released a recent beauty filter titled ‘Daring Glamour’; powered by AI which seamlessly moulds the filter to users’ faces, the filter – which blurs users’ skin – is remarkably, uncannily convincing.
“It just isn’t possible to realize the look of poreless, ageless, textureless, glowy skin in any meaningful, long-term way” – Jessica DeFino
Technology is increasingly warping our perception of what skin looks like and subsequently pushing us to pursue a glance – entirely poreless, perfectly smooth, perpetually glowy – which is ultimately unattainable to realize. “When nearly all of your ‘inputs’ for what a human being looks like come from digital photographs and videos – lots of that are edited, filtered, Facetuned, Photoshopped, or otherwise ‘blurred’ because of the character of screens – you’ll be able to begin to see your personal actual, human, non-filtered face as ‘lower than,’” explains beauty reporter and critic Jessica DeFino. “From here, it’s easy to blow things out of proportion — to use an internal magnifying mirror to your so-called flaws.”
There’s mounting evidence which proves filters are making us feel bad about ourselves too. Numerous studies have confirmed that there’s a correlation between using these beauty filters and experiencing body dysmorphia or wanting to hunt down cosmetic surgery. And as the skincare industry has continued to boom, lots of us have shifted to specializing in pursuing pore-free, ultra-smooth skin, forgetting that our skin is an organ, and in point of fact ‘good skin’ is just skin which performs its function: that’s, protecting us from germs and helping regulate our body temperature.
It’s becoming increasingly common to treat normal facets of skin corresponding to pores, hyperpigmentation, and wrinkles as glaring imperfections, and in some cases, imagine issues which aren’t there in any respect. “When a selected beauty trend or beauty standard becomes the norm, it will probably affect our perception of ourselves,” says DeFino. It’s a phenomenon often known as ‘perception drift’. “We will begin to see our normal, non-product enhanced faces as abnormal, and an abnormal amount of product – whether blush, brow pencil, ‘glazing fluid’, or Botox – as ideal.” She adds that terms like ‘blush blindness’ can downplay the gravity of this issue. “It’s dysmorphia – an inability to see ourselves as we’re.”
@myashay_ Don’t let these filters idiot you😭 everyone has skin texture, spots, facial hair & imperfections irrespective of how perfect they give the impression of being on their instas 🤍 #boldglamourfilter #realskintexture #instavsreality ♬ original sound – EX7STENCE™
Rawlings says she definitely feels she suffers from ‘skin dysmorphia’. “It sort of works in the identical way that body dysmorphia works, where I’m hyper-fixated on my skin and I spend loads of time my spots,” she says. “Something which feels quite minor to others can feel all-encompassing to me.” Amin feels similarly. “I’ve bought loads of high-priced skin peels within the hope that they may transform my skin, but I’m just never blissful,” she says. “I feel like my skin doesn’t have that perfect smoothness that you simply see online.” She adds that she will often struggle to inform whether someone has used a filter on their photos. “Perhaps that’s why I’ve got such a warped perception of my skin.”
DeFino stresses that “it just isn’t possible to realize the look of poreless, ageless, textureless, glowy skin in any meaningful, long-term way,” and that pursuing this ideal could actually damage your skin long-term. “Short-term, sure, there could also be products that create this effect. Over time, lots of these products and procedures can actually disturb the skin barrier and disrupt the skin microbiome, which might eventually result in inflammation – AKA pimples, dermatitis, eczema, psoriasis, rosacea and ‘premature’ ageing.”
Because it stands, social media and insidious beauty filters aren’t going anywhere – so perhaps the most effective thing we are able to do is pause and query what it actually means to have ‘good’ skin and, crucially, whether we’re all pursuing a great that may only ever exist throughout the 4 corners of your phone. “I often query if my skin is bad since it doesn’t have that perfect ‘glassy’ look,” Amin surmises. “But nonetheless, I don’t know anyone who does have skin like that – other than on the web.”
