Our perception of beauty

Volume 12 Issues 8 August, 2022

Snapchat^® was developed by two Stanford University students who felt emoticons weren’t sufficient to transmit the emotion someone might wish could be sent with a text message. It then evolved into one of the most popular apps of this decade, particularly known for its wide variety of photo filters. Founded in 2011, it took about seven years for plastic surgeons and psychiatrists to realize that the use of these filters had paved the way for a new phenomenon called “Snapchat dysmorphia“. It majorly involved teens, who started flooding into these clinics requesting surgeries through which they would resemble more like their pictures. They wanted bigger eyes, smaller noses, clear skin and fuller lips.

This isn’t the first time when such cases are coming to light. Undoubtedly, we’ve always had a substantial demand for plastic surgeries, but one cannot deny that the perception of social media has caused this upsurge in cases. We live in the days when we have countless options to edit how we look in pictures. We can finally change things on a microscopic level, using artificial intelligence (AI) ideas to put together a combination of changes in a few seconds, which a single human brain would take years of experience to comprehend. In all this hassle, we often fail to realize when these features start affecting us to this extent. Teenagers often fail to understand that these surgeries come with their side- effects, chances of recurrent infections and that even after all this, they might not look how they imagined themselves.

What started as a new idea to express one’s emotions through pics now resulted in an app that has deeply rooted these perceptions of flawless beauty in our minds. To prevent such a surge in these cases, Instagram has removed and banned these enhancing filters. The human brain is an ever-intriguing marvel-an enigma to understand. As a social animal, the human being knowingly or unknowingly falls prey to striving towards social acceptance and recognition. Give this a thought, and you will realize that you have been in that situation at some point too.

Someone recently told me, “Listen, you are perfect, just the way you are.” So, to all the people going through this self-doubt, anxiety, or self-consciousness, I want to remind you that these perceptions of beauty might make your pictures more liked on Instagram. Still, it takes just one moment to realize that all this is psychological, a piece in our heads and fragments of our imaginations. The only point those matters is to be comfortable in your skin, accept yourself, and remember, “you are perfect, just the way you are”.