Ordinary Days: Perfection, but at what cost?

Lately I’ve been asking my friends if they’ve ever heard of something called FaceTune. Before a few weeks ago, I hadn’t, but after reading about it on Instagram, I did a little digging. It started when I saw a photo of an actress I follow. In this particular photo, she looked especially fresh-faced and perky. In the comments section, someone asked her to share her skincare regimen, and she chalked it up to “this little thing called the FaceTune app.” 

I was confused at first, but then I remembered a Facebook friend had recently made a comment about how she often ran into friends in real life and hardly recognized them because they all used FaceTune on their social media photos. At the time, I disregarded it because I had no idea what this FaceTune thing was. But hearing it for the second time piqued my interest, hence the digging.

If you’re not in the know (as I wasn’t), FaceTune is an app that allows you to take a photo of yourself, run it through a series of in-depth edits, and post it online. Your friends and followers see you looking young, clear-skinned, thin, polished — generally a more (visually) perfect version of yourself. 

So of course, I had to try it. I downloaded the app, even paying the $2.99 (because, research), and scoured my photo roll for a photo that showed my face well enough to work with. I found one where I thought I looked kind of pretty — it wasn’t anything fancy, I just looked like me, happy and relaxed. Then I started editing. 

It took me a minute to figure out all the tools at my disposal, but suffice to say, there are tools to smooth wrinkles and spots, lighten shadows and scars, brighten eyes and darken lashes. You can tighten your waist, round your chest or change the shape of your face or a particular feature like a nose or chin. 

When I finished “tuning” my photo, I looked … well, airbrushed. My teeth were so white, they gleamed, and my skin was as smooth as it was in college. My eyes sparkled like a Disney princess, and my nose was noticeably slimmer. Then I noticed a button that allowed you to toggle back and forth between the original photo and the edited one. As I pressed the button, all my wrinkles and spots and imperfections disappeared, then reappeared. Disappeared, reappeared. 

You can probably guess what happened to that original photo I had thought made me look pretty — all of the sudden, it looked wrinkled, spotty and imperfect. The edited version — the glossy me — was the obvious ideal.

That night, I told my husband about my experiment and showed him my fancy new photo. He laughed and jokingly said, “Okay, let me try it,” but I had already deleted the app from my phone. I wanted to erase from my mind that gleaming, non-flawed version of myself because it wasn’t real, and I didn’t want to ruin any other perfectly fine photos by “just touching up a few things,” thereby erasing me. 

If you’ve ever seen the impossible beauties in checkout-lane magazines and wished you could have that same airbrushed perfection, FaceTune is the answer … but at what price? 

We’re all used to seeing Photoshopped images in magazines and online, but when it invades real life, making us or our friends look polished as new pennies, making our imperfections seem like nuisances we should just do away with, it starts to feel a little supernatural, like we’re in some way interfering with the divine. 

Or maybe I’m making too big a deal of it. Maybe it’s just a silly pastime, a way to laugh at how technology allows us to have a little fun. Somehow, though, I don’t think it’ll feel so silly and fun if I see my daughters one day “tuning” their photos to make themselves appear just a little more perfect. I’d rather all three of us look in the mirror and be content with what we see, not lamenting our “flaws.” 

And in the same way, when we look at the people in our lives, I want us to see their hearts instead of the pretty package. 

My novels “The Hideaway,” “Hurricane Season” and the recently released “Glory Road” are available wherever books are sold. You can reach me by email at Lauren @LaurenKDenton.com, visit my website LaurenKDenton.com or find me onInstagram @LaurenKDentonBooks, Twitter @LaurenKDenton or on Facebook@ LaurenKDentonAuthor.