FESS UP IF YOU FACETUNE

A pertinent question considering the world we’re living in

It used to be that there were some real bogeymen, by which I mean bogeywomen — the terrible editrixes of magazines, who Photoshopped images of already outrageously skinny and beautiful models into even more outrageously skinny and beautiful versions of themselves.

I count myself among that band of nasties. I used to edit a fashion magazine. Together, we perpetrated awful sins against the self-esteem and body image of countless women — and latterly it seems also men and those on the gender spectrum — who, because of the genetic lottery and our deleterious tampering with the truth, could never hope to even remotely arrive at the holy grail of so-called perfection.

It’s been a few years since we all publicly selfflagellated and confessed to these sins, and worked actively to change the narrative and the images. Sometimes, even, entire magazines were produced with not a single Photoshopped image. Except the advertisements

— because that kind of editorial scrutiny wasn’t imposed on the people spending billions to influence the way we understood the world and what we aspired to buy to make ourselves feel good in it.

There was a brief period when people got excited by certain companies that purported to be using real people, in all their natural beauty, to sell their products. But even these companies eventually got slapped with backlash.

But all these debates are moot. Because it transpires that what people really wanted all along was the ability to Photoshop themselves into images of perfection — whatever the prevailing version of that may be, according to the fashions of the time.

So, instead of getting a makeup artist on call to your house at the crack of dawn and setting up a daily shoot for the socials à la Kim Kardashian — the queen of reality — you can simply apply a filter to your life and a Facetune to your visage.

I watched a video recently where Madonna (the mother of all filters and a fan of some intense plastic surgery) slips in and out from behind a filter on Instagram. Her intense bloodshot eyes popping out from behind the image gave a trippy hint as to why she had chosen to go full cartoon that particular day.

Now there isn’t even someone to blame and call out. The internet, in its entirety, is composed of a human multitude of avatars all Facetuning and buffing their image into something nature never intended, but which they happily picked off an app. Reality is a slippery slope.

Help is on hand, however, if you worry that the entire social world is a giant catfish. The UK is considering a bill called the Digitally Altered Body Image Bill, proposed by a Tory MP who was a GP. He wants greater transparency when brands and influencers have used Photoshop, Facetune or any other editing on their paid images, to combat a rise in eating disorders. I really don’t know what he plans to do for the rest of the internet.