Instagram is missing the point by removing its “plastic surgery filters”
Back in August, if your mind can stretch back that far, Facebook announced that its Spark AR (augmented reality) project for creating filters would be opening to the public. In simple terms, this meant that anyone getting creative with AR could publish their effects for general use. Providing a new platform for digital artists, the development has allowed IG to seem, at least at surface-level, more user-led. Since then, even the most casual of users will have noticed a sudden outpouring of new filters – with opportunities to look like a sexy robot or vaseline sculpture at the swipe of a finger.
However, filters such as Beautiful Face and Plastics, which both imitate plastic surgery looks, have been stirring controversy and gesturing towards more disturbing consequences of AR. In recent weeks, tabloids were ablaze with accusations that another filter, Fix Me – which allows users to see what a surgeon would “correct” about their face – had stoked up a veritable mental health crisis.
In response to the claims levied against them, Facebook has taken filters associated with plastic surgery offline. Speaking to the Sun, a Facebook representative stated: “We’re re-evaluating our policies – we want filters to be a positive experience for people. While we’re re-evaluating, we will: 1) remove all effects from the gallery associated with plastic surgery; 2) stop further approval of new effects like this; 3) and remove current effects if they’re reported to us.”
We can’t help but wonder, however, is the backlash justified? We’ve already experienced furore over Snapchat’s “gender swap” filter and the way it offered white-washed, rigidly binary visions of gender. Similarly, then, these “plastic surgery” filters might further encourage overly reductive definitions of “beauty”. Nobody should feel any pressure to shrink their nose or chisel their cheekbones but it is naive to suggest that removing these filters will do anything to solve young people’s beef with their bodies. This does little to tackle our society’s toxic beauty culture – particularly as Instagram has always been a hotbed of looks-based anxiety.
It’s interesting that Facebook has responded so swiftly – particularly as the censorship of people of colour calling out racism on the platform (colloquially known as being “zucked“) remains unaddressed. It seems that the social media giant is mostly interested in lessening the volume on any PR backlash, rather than making tangible inroads on the toxic atmosphere that pervades its channels.
Offline, cosmeticians have seen a rise in demand for the “Instagram face” exemplified by Kylie Jenner and best attained via dermal fillers, alongside contouring and eyelash extensions. Ultimately, playing around with a filter is harmless when we compare it to the impossible beauty standards that abound all around us, stoically unchanged regardless of incessant marketing chat about “diversity” or “real” beauty. The Instagram face might be a different beauty ideal to what we’ve seen before, but it’s still unattainable to many without the kind of surgery replicated, tongue-in-cheek, by filters like Fix Me.
