Digital make-up and the pressure to be flawless

As the times change and we go forward we can notice how influential and dictating social media and beauty/fashion industry has become. Especially the beauty trends and what we tend to describe as attractive which in my opinion started to be quite harsh or unforgiving, I am even tempted to say that the common canon of beauty has got its own physical form that manifest itself literally everywhere.

All we see is lean, fit and muscular body with great hair and a pretty face with a flawless, perfect and radiant skin. There is no way of escaping from it, unless we don’t watch TV, browse the Internet ,read magazines or don’t look at billboards while we pass them on the street. And even then if we try to ignore it we are risking being alienated and feeling bad about ourselves. Sadly it gets worse if someone suffers from a skin condition which is clearly visible and might be hard to come by without proper knowledge and  understanding. Skin problems such as acne, vitiligo, scars or birth marks are not something unusual however might be interpreted by some as the signs of unattractiveness.

And here is where make-up comes handy, especially heavy duty camouflage products which recently became even more popular thanks to a famous highlighting&contouring trend made so popular by Kim Kardashian.

Make-up camouflage is designed to conceal  skin flaws, but at the same time, look very natural on the skin, blending with the surrounding skin tone, so they do not look noticeable.  Although skin camouflage cannot alter the structure of the skin, the immediate visual effect can help greatly with a person’s self-esteem. 

And I can say from my own experience that altering your own imperfections can not only to put an end to intrusive questioning, stares and unwarranted comments but also convince yourself that it’s not really that bad and that there is more to life. Once you start feeling better in your own skin, you become more confident in every aspect of your life, after all that big wall that you build around yourself or your imperfection (whatever it is: wrinkle, scar or spot) starts to fade away, because you no longer have to worry about it or paying all your attention and negative emotions to it. Sometimes people can make their life revolve around their complexes so they lose sight of everything else.

That is what a physical change can do, or let's call it semi-permanent change due to the obvious properties of make-up, but what about a quick, easy and effortless alteration of your image, without the need to buy any of the make-up products or even moving from your sofa? "Faceshopping", "Facetuning" or in simple words retouching your pictures in an instant via mobile app, they are also called "One-tap makeovers". Well that's what I came across a while ago but decided to share and go a bit into the case.

I won't be reviewing, praising or discouraging anyone from using them, far from it. I want to keep my point of view neutral, as long as it makes your life quality better - I say go for it.

What we are doing here is instantly retouching our picture to get rid of all flaws that are present (under-eye circles, spots, shadows) changing skin tone to the one preferred, giving skin glow and silky finish and changing the structure of the face by raising cheekbones, thinning out the face, along with a nose job and moving brow bones to lift the eyes up.

Ok lets have a look on what one of them can actually do ;) Shall we? The link to official website is here click http://perfect365.arcsoft.com/ so you can download and test it yourselves :)

Source: http://perfect365.arcsoft.com/

Below is just a "standard" #selfie which was corrected by default as "glowy" option which removed my under eye circles, brighten my skin and made it smoother. Then I defined my nose and lifted my cheekbones so you get the idea...

Before

After

Here I decided to go a bit more wild with adding on eyeliner, eyeshadows and just "usual" skin perfecting procedure ;)

Before

After

Now I'll be working with my "naked" bare skin, no make-up picture to make the change even more visible and obvious...

Original picture

"Perfected" face, added on eyeliner and blush

Thinner eyebrows and lipstick fail ;)

Change of hairstyle? Why not ;) I don't know if it's just me or it looks like a character from The SIMS?

No comments :P

Well as the picture above shows just try to be realistic about it, one tap wrong any you might end up looking like an Oompa-Loompa with too much tan and lovely classy, evening make-up (as the one shown above)...

Make-up in a second with no need to mess about? Sound very tempting, even for me, although I love doing make-up on others and enjoy the creative aspect of it, but getting ready in the morning... well I just wish it was all there, maybe that's why I usually stick to a very natural look, in other words the quicker the better. However quicker doesn't always go with better, especially if you just learning make-up techniques or experimenting to find the look that suits you most, that can be tricky if you rush things just before you leave to work....

That's what I mean, well hang on a second, perfect #selfie, 100 likes and social media glory, why not? But we do actually have to go out at some point, don't we? And then what? Well there might be that awkward moment when people you know will actually verify the truthfulness of your pretty profile picture. It won't be as bad if we only add a bit of blush and conceal here and there, so we actually resemble ourselves. But lets face it, if we have the full "cosmetic surgery" and make-up magic available in just one tap (or maybe a few - at least in my case) why shouldn't we enjoy it to the fullest? Then let's just hope you have so much self-confidence that you actually don't care if people start making snappy comments about how "photo-shopped" you appear to be, or that you only know nice people that won't care if you do.

As I mentioned before the social pressure does not help and people tend to stay away and reject everything that is within the artificial beauty standards.

Altered pictures, digitally enhanced beauty? Fair enough, but that only exists in pixels, if you can recreate this look in real life make-up - great, well if you can't don't chase something that is so platonic and unreal that is going to make you upset or give people reasons to bother you.

I don't know if you have seen film "Surrogates" with Bruce Willis? Basically it revolves around a "high-tech surrogate phenomenon that allows people to purchase remote controlled humanoid robots through which they interact with society. These fit, attractive, remotely controlled robots ultimately assume their life roles, enabling people to experience life vicariously from the comfort and safety of their own homes."

Well it starts with a selfie but who knows? Cosmetic surgery, make-up, personal trainer, well that takes a lot of money and effort, we can sum it up as: pain, sweat and tears. Maybe the resolution is a remotely controlled perfect looking avatar? Just pick one from a catalog?

We want to feel that we control the definition of beauty not the social media, well at least I do.

Constant alteration, retouching and perfecting things around us, ourselves...

Do we really need this? Maybe we do, maybe we don't. Only time will show and the values which we choose to guide us.