Photoshop community ‘fixing’ celebrities’ faces on Instagram – yay or nay? (3 of 4)

On the other hand, it allows us to relive our beauty fantasies in the digital world. Whether it is through photoshops of WarNymph or even the advanced filter art advanced by Ines Alpha – we are seeing a growing trend where people want to look more ‘perfect’ than they do in reality.

Dr. Bamford, from the London Centre for Eating Disorders and Body Image points out that these online handles fail to realize the impact this has on the users’ emotional, physical, and psychological state when they try to pursue these ideals of perfection. By altering their photos in order to look good, people develop a sense of insufficiency, which can later cause anxiety, depression, and other mental issues, which are high-risk factors for eating disorders.

The era of social media, reality TV, and tabloid culture has in a way led people into questioning how they look and ways through which that can be optimized. The culture of ‘before and after’ is another way by which the media propagates body dissatisfaction. And when it is followed by a list of ‘methods’ to fix it, it almost becomes a guide, a manual. It is the sort of thing that pushes the young and impressionable people into obsessing over those who possess the physical or financial assets to get those beauty ideals.

If having big boobs, or being blonde was the 00s era glam hallmarks, it has now turned to the striking jawline, pillow lips, and cat eyes. And that is something popular writer Jia Tolentino describes quite aptly as something that is “distinctly white but ambiguously ethnic”, which is true. Barring some of the popular light-skinned celebs such as Beyoncé or Rihanna, these accounts seldom feature any dark skin or black subjects in their posts, which reveals that even in the realm of beauty that is imagined and not real, being black gets you excluded from that narrative.