With faux freckles, just the right amount of blur, and a bit of tint on the cheeks and lips and your photo is “IG Worthy” - all with the swipe of a finger. Regardless, if you only slept a couple of hours last night, eyes all puffy and dark, or your skin lacking moisture due to an unbelievable amount of stress. Worry not with your trusty Instagram filter.
Yet, as if the universe is a scale that needs to be balanced, your positive energy and confidence that came along with that good selfie attracted unsolicited negativities.
“Maganda ka lang naman ‘pag may filter.”
“Iba parin pag natural lang tingnan.”
Those who often use filters when uploading selfies have experienced shaming and bashing through memes and comments disguised as “harmless jokes.” Online trolls call these photos as “traps” and “maganda sa picture, sa personal panget,” amongst many other slurs, labeling those with filtered selfies as liars who hide their natural looks just to gain more likes and views.
But what do filters do aside remove blemishes, erase dark circles, and blur all visible pores? Sure, some come with digital makeup to give color on your cheeks and lips, but that’s something people (mostly women) already do daily using makeup.
But why? Why did these developers think that these measures are needed for us to upload a selfie?
It is because society told us that these blemishes, pimples, and all sorts of “imperfections” need to be nonexistent to be called beautiful, even if all these so-called imperfections are natural and have nothing to say regarding one’s dignity, kindness, and character.
As someone who spends a good portion of my day on social media, I can say that filters aren’t a problem. It is a band-aid solution to an issue that most of us have to deal with, the impossible standard of beauty that online culture has imposed on all of us. We, humans of different colors, shapes, and strengths have defined beauty in a box that few of us ever fit in.
We expect perfection, even if we know that these photos rarely mirror our daily life. We post the laughing, bikini-wearing, sunkissed, and coconut-holding beach photos. We are only confident of the selfies with the perfect lighting and makeup. And men’s topless mirror selfies are only welcome and appreciated if they have the body of an Abercrombie model.
We all know life isn’t always as vibrant as a bikini photo on the beach. We’re well aware that we don’t get that perfect lighting all the time. Some days, food tastes so good that you wouldn’t mind eating more at the expense of that well-sculpted abs - but online culture made us feel as if these are the only parts of life worth showing.
“Di mo siguro kaya magpost ng walang filter.”
I could - or at least I wish I could with full confidence. I want to be able to show myself without thinking a certain part of me is wrong. Someday, I hope to look at my picture that is as unprocessed and unedited as what I look like in the mirror and think that I look good. I long for the day that I don’t feel the need to hide what I look like, blemishes, and scars included, just to feel accepted and appreciated.
Maybe one day, we will stop defining beauty out of a single standard and learn that it comes in all shapes, colors, sizes, and genders.
But for now, some people will never run out of words to say regardless of what you do. If you upload a picture with either make-up or filter on, they’d call you unnatural. But when you try to post a barefaced one, they’d say you look sick and should take more care of yourself.
It’s time that we recognize that beauty shouldn’t be a pressure that others put upon us. We do not owe anyone to look a certain way for their liking. Beauty comes from within, from how you think about, feel about, and love yourself and other people around you.
So with a filter or not, don’t hesitate to upload that selfie - you look beautiful either way.
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