It started small. Freya, 16, from Brighton, would experiment with filters that modified her face when sending selfies to her friends on Snapchat. At first these were goofy effects, the kind that gave her dog ears or huge comedy sunglasses. Then she started getting more interested in beauty filters which made her skin look clearer, her eyes bigger, her forehead smaller. She gradually increased the level of image manipulation over time until the point where she would fear going out to meet friends IRL – what if they had gotten so used to the Freya from selfies that they were shocked to see her real face? What if they called her fake?
The only solution, she felt, was to wear makeup that made her real face resemble the enhanced virtual…
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Dazed & Confused (Digital) - 1 Issue, Winter 2022