Tag Archives: diversity

The Lure of the Generic Face

Laurie and Debbie say:

instagram face filter montage

EIther Coco Chanel or George Orwell (two very different people!) or both, said ““Nature gives you the face you have at twenty. Life shapes the face you have at thirty. But at fifty you get the face you deserve.”

Jia Tolentino’s “The Age of Instagram Face” in the New Yorker demonstrates how much less true that is now than it was when Chanel said it. Tolentino’s piece covers two closely linked and deeply disturbing trends. Tolentino writes first about the use of face filters and FaceTune on Instagram, Snapchat, and other picture and selfie apps:

Snapchat, which launched in 2011 and was originally known as a purveyor of disappearing messages, has maintained its user base in large part by providing photo filters, some of which allow you to become intimately familiar with what your face would look like if it were ten-per-cent more conventionally attractive—if it were thinner, or had smoother skin, larger eyes, fuller lips. Instagram has added an array of flattering selfie filters to its Stories feature. FaceTune, which was released in 2013 and promises to help you “wow your friends with every selfie,” enables even more precision. A number of Instagram accounts are dedicated to identifying the tweaks that celebrities make to their features with photo-editing apps. Celeb Face, which has more than a million followers, posts photos from the accounts of celebrities, adding arrows to spotlight signs of careless FaceTuning. Follow Celeb Face for a month, and this constant perfecting process begins to seem both mundane and pathological.

That may be, but popular and reassuring trumps mundane and pathological every day, especially when people are desperate for praise and recognition. Tolentino interviewed “celebrity makeup artist Colby Smith” who estimates that 95% of the most-followed people on Instagram use FaceTune.

Technologically, we have never before been able to so thoroughly modify images of our faces, and especially to modify moving images of our faces. Makeup has been around for centuries, plastic surgery of varying quality for many decades, and yet this is a sea change. It is disappointing, though not surprising, that this ability is primarily being used to make us look more alike, and more generic, rather than more individual.

If you manipulate your face on social media, what happens when you go out in the world? You won’t look the way you’ve presented yourself; you’ll have to show the “imperfections” that you can hide on line. And that takes us to Tolentino’s second topic: the development of plastic surgery.

According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, Americans received more than seven million neurotoxin injections in 2018, and more than two and a half million filler injections. That year, Americans spent $16.5 billion on cosmetic surgery; ninety-two per cent of these procedures were performed on women. Thanks to injectables, cosmetic procedures are no longer just for people who want huge changes, or who are deep in battle with the aging process—they’re for millennials, or even, in rarefied cases, members of Gen Z.

Tolentino goes into detail about what plastic surgeons can do, how they do it, and what it costs (the least expensive procedures are $6,000 or so; a full suite of recommended changes could come to $30,000). The procedures are done using FaceTune and similar apps as trial runs: what if we sharpened your chin here? you would look like this. what if we pulled up your cheekbone here? you would look like this.  So the same apps we use to modify our faces on line can be shopping apps for what work we want done.

The result:  If you have the money, you can modify your face online, and then modify your face in real life to match or approximate what you’ve done online. If you want to look more like Kim Kardashian, you can.

So what do people (still mostly, but certainly not all women) want to look like? Tolentino ventured to Smith that it was …

a beauty ideal that favored white women capable of manufacturing a look of rootless exoticism. “Absolutely,” Smith said. “We’re talking an overly tan skin tone, a South Asian influence with the brows and eye shape, an African-American influence with the lips, a Caucasian influence with the nose, a cheek structure that is predominantly Native American and Middle Eastern.”

This is whiteness co-opting various “interesting” ethnic looks, taking facial features in the same way white people took tribal art objects, native lands, and so much more.

This media-fueled, profit-taking movement toward sameness impoverishes us all: the glory of the human face is in its variety and the way our lives inscribe themselves on our faces. So many kinds of diversity are at stake here: racial, ethnic, age, etc., but also the elusive and essential quality of individuality. It’s the only way you can have the face you deserve.

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Follow Debbie on Twitter. Thanks to Wayward Cats for the pointer.

 

Black News: Rihanna Changes the Makeup Landscape

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Debbie says:

from Popsugar’s article analyzing all 40 shades Fenty Beauty sells

Princess Weekes, writing at The Mary Sue, provides some history of black  and brown makeup, setting the stage for her article about the huge success of Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty line, launched not even six months ago.

From the beginning of the makeup industry, there has been a bias and leaning towards catering to white women. Skin lighteners and skin bleach were frequently advertised in African-American magazines and it wasn’t until the 1970s that makeup lines began to actually start embracing different skin tones as being beautiful. This was mostly done by black-owned beauty businesses. …

As a tan-to-medium-toned girl with olive/warm undertones, it is hard to just go to the drug store and find a foundation that doesn’t completely wash me out or turn me orange. Going into Ulta, I once spent an entire hour swatching every single bronzer in that store to find just one that was dark enough to be a contour shade for me. I couldn’t find a single one that had enough pigment to be dark enough for me contour within either the low-end or high-end brands, that wouldn’t just look way too dark on my skin tone. Considering I am nowhere near as dark as other women of color, I can only imagine what the struggle might have been if I were darker.

Makeup isn’t something I personally care about it; I don’t wear it and I effectively never have. That doesn’t change my respect for Rihanna for meeting the needs of a huge range of people (mostly women) who do care, and it doesn’t diminish my applause for her success.

WWD reports that Fenty’s sales in its first month alone were five times that of Kylie’s—and 34 percent higher the following month and that if this trend continues Fenty will be outselling both Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner’s beauty lines. As has been reported on Popsugar, Jenner’s brand and KKW Beauty have caught some criticism on the web from reviewers who don’t think the shades work for them. Not to mention those who feel like both of them heavily appropriate off of the style and looks of black women.

Fenty’s success isn’t just great for Rihanna, it is great for beauty diversity. It shows everyone in the industry that consumers are not to ignore the lack of shade range offered anymore and they are willing to put their money where their mouths are. Teen Vogue reports that “Fenty Beauty fans reportedly spend an average of $471 per year in the makeup category, compared to shoppers of Kat Von D who spend $371, KKW shoppers who spend $278, and Kylie Cosmetics shoppers who spend $181.”

To break this down just a little further,

As Weekes goes on to point out, diversity is not only good politics, it’s good business. The big firms in any field will put some time and energy into getting their share of that business, but they are almost always shamefully slow to recruit and then listen to folks who live in that diverse landscape, so their racism and conventional assumptions always keep them behind the curve. The smaller firms, in this case often vehicles for stars, tend to follow one person’s or one limited group’s tastes and treat that as if it was universal. Thus, Kim Kardashian and Kylie Jenner, both also famous, can’t play in Rihanna’s league, because they wear too many blinders.

And thus, a black-owned business with a genuine vision, can drop in and, in less than half a year, walk away with market share just by giving people what they are looking for.

The fact that privilege makes you stupid is not a good thing. But every once in a while, it leaves an opening for someone with less privilege to do something smart, do it well, and profit from it. That is a good thing.

Why is this a black history month post? Because black history begins with black news. Just as Princess Weekes contexts her article with black and brown makeup history, in ten years, people will be contexting their articles with how Fenty Beauty changed the landscape long-term.