Beauty, Unfiltered.

While I love writing about holistic ways to keep ourselves looking and feeling as great as possible, I can’t help but feel a strong compulsion to write about my growing concern over how we are starting to define “beauty” as a culture.  I’m raising a daughter and a son during a time when the concept of beauty and beauty standards have reached new levels of disconnection and dysmorphia….and  that’s hard to ignore.

Eating healthy, exercising, doing inner work, and using natural products to keep our skin clear and realistically youthful are all positive ways in which we can gain confidence in our appearance and feel good about ourselves.  There’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of that, and I don’t think it’s vain or narcissistic to want to look and feel our best. I do think, however, that with the advent of social media and social media “celebrities” this concept of looking our best has become as twisted and distorted as the Snapchat filters too many people can’t seem to live without.

I already know that because of how I made a living for over 15 years, I could potentially be labeled a hypocrite for bringing this topic up…but let me clarify.  When I started modeling, Photoshop and retouching were used on an as-needed basis.  You had a scar, a pimple, or dark circles under your eyes, they would be smoothed away in post. However, clients and agents always preferred to not have to do too much post production work because it was timely and expensive. So what you saw then was closer to reality than what you see now, when anyone with a phone app can transform themselves into something completely unrealistic.

Models and actresses have always gotten flack for setting “beauty standards” that could potentially be seen as impossible to achieve, and I do understand that sentiment.  The thing is, that when I started modeling, we were all still very much REAL.  Real women and men who just happened to be tall enough, thin enough, with clear enough skin, and symmetrical enough features. We would go to castings without a stitch of makeup on.  We had to have completely natural photos in our portfolios along with the heavily made up ones.  We needed to present completely raw polaroids to our clients so that they could see the canvas they were working with.

Unfiltered.  

On the odd occasion, one of us would book a glossy, avant garde campaign and extra work would go into post production to create a possibly alienesque or otherworldly image.  The thing is….the majority of the time, we relied on good makeup, good lighting, and talented photographers. Not filters.

About halfway through my career, Photoshop started to become more prevalent.  Skin became poreless, models might have their already thin waists, thinned out even more, or given a more prevalent thigh gap. Things started getting a little crazy, but it was still part of the smoke and mirrors of the fashion and entertainment industries.  They were selling a fantasy, and we all knew it.

Professional models would 9 times out of 10 scrub their faces clean and remove their fake nails and extensions before even leaving the set at the end of the day.  Then, all of a sudden, social media made its debut….but even then we were still just posting completely normal pictures of our lives and loved ones on MySpace and Facebook  (remember MySpace lol??) . And yeah, sometimes we looked like absolute crap…but we didn’t really care all that much.

So…what is going on now?  Not only do we still have the normal models and actors gracing the covers of magazines and advertisements,  but all of a sudden we have this barrage of influencers and insta models who have reached a level of filtering and retouching that has rendered them looking like caricatures. Add in the Botox and fillers so many of them use and what have we now started to accept or confuse as beauty?  

…and then there’s veneers.  When I was growing up veneers were only something old men in Panama hats and gold chains would get. Now, young men and women are running out and dropping thousands for fake teeth like it’s nothing. People with perfectly normal teeth!  We have gone from what was once considered “unattainable” to completely farcical. How much further do we go?  Will we forget what real beauty, natural beauty is?  And what about the kids growing up with this as their “normal”?

The average age of girls getting Botox and fillers in LA is mid 20’s…..insanity. What will happen 5-10 years from now?  Will middle school girls be lining up for injections?  Are we really raising a generation of girls that cannot age gracefully, that cannot embrace their natural beauty or be comfortable in their own skin?  And what about our boys?  Will they grow up thinking all women must look plastic, plumped up, and overdone?

Prior to all of this, what made even the “unrealistic beauties” such as Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Naomi Campbell, Bridget Hall, and yeah, even Kate Moss, so amazing is that they all looked different. They were gorgeous, yes, but had quirks and features all their own. Unique beauties.  Now,  so many women and girls are running to get Juvederm cheekbones, and Restylane lips in order to look like something social media is selling as “hot”.  Take a look at Instagram….how many of these people look like they have had their faces molded by a cookie cutter?  Too many.

We already have a growing number of young women requesting plastic surgeons to make them look like their Snapchat selfies.  My brain simply cannot wrap itself around that.  How is that different than asking to be transformed surgically into an anime character?   Why have we become so obsessed with this new and strange aesthetic?  How much worse does it have to get before we swing back to a more natural version of beauty?  

Snapchat filters were designed as a form of entertainment, yet so many people use them now as a representation of what they look actually like.  I’ve heard women say they won’t take any pictures without a filter anymore.  The blurrier the better.  Maybe I’m old, but back in my day, a blurry photo was proof of poor photography or a shaky hand. Out of focus was not a good thing.

I will always look for good light, play with exposure, work my best angles, and will without shame remove a blemish, bloodshot allergy eyes,  or the vestiges of a poor night’s sleep in the selfies I take for my blog, but I plan to keep my Snapchat filter virginity forever.  Look closely at any of my pictures and you’ll see my freckles, my smile lines, my pores, my far from perfect eyebrows, and even old acne scars.

I suck at applying makeup so even with concealer I’m far from perfect. My modeling pictures will undoubtedly have been retouched in order to even out my skin tone, brighten my skin and eyes, or sometimes even add virtual makeup, but my features and body proportions remain unchanged.  I also have dozens of professional photos shot without a stitch of makeup or a single bit of retouching…and to be honest, those are my favorite shots.  I want to only be the healthiest version of myself.  

In my daily life, I don’t wear much makeup if any, my hair is real, my skin is real, my lashes are real, I look a mess more often than not. I’m as insecure about my “flaws” as anyone else.  I’m just grateful I didn’t grow up with this new concept of beauty.  I also know my daughter is watching.

As a matter of fact, not one of the models I have worked with or known have ever wanted to look done up outside of a set or shooting location. Work is work. Real life is real life. You don’t see doctors wearing their scrubs on their days off, right? Same thing…but social media has us all, all almost all of us, believing that women should wake up with perfect eyeliner, brows, and hair. That we can’t run to Whole Foods in mismatched clothes or eat an avocado toast in anything other than head to toe filtered “perfection”.

Somehow, at some point (especially in places like my former hometown of LA) we’ve come to believe that we always have to be performing and “looking the part”…as if real life were a casting for the next Oscar winning film or fashion campaign.  But it’s not. Far from it.

We’re wasting so much time comparing ourselves to what has become essentially the cartoonification of people and trying to emulate that, that life is passing us by….leaving people unhappy and always searching for that one filter, that one cosmetic procedure, that will make them feel better in a vicious and never-ending cycle.

There’s no happiness at the end of a needle. There’s no joy in an app filter.  You want to use them, that’s fine. I’m all for people doing what makes them feel good.  Dress up, do your hair, try out the season’s new makeup look.  It’s not about living like a blank canvas.  I love getting dolled up as much as the next woman, but can we keep it real?   Need a little nip & tuck?  Then go for it…..but the best work is always that which looks like no work has been done at all. We’ve been moving way past that though, because I’m afraid that in much of what we are seeing online and now even in person, moderation has gone out the window….multiple times over.

I find myself having conversations with my kids about inner beauty, being natural, being genuine….and while, yes, I did model for a living and still sometimes do…what they see in person, and what they see in my normal everyday pictures is just me. Flawed, raw, and real.  Spots, smile lines, split ends, sun damage…all of it.  

I talk to them about the importance of good hygiene and taking care of their bodies, teeth, skin….but most importantly that I want them to be happy and true to themselves. That what they have to offer the world…that which makes them uniquely THEM….is what will always be the most beautiful.  And I can only pray that they find partners someday that are just as real as I am raising them to be.  Beautifully unfiltered.

*******

P.S. Funnily enough, a few days after I wrote this, Jameela Jamil, who is a well known British actress and model, came out on social media covering a similar sentiment.  She mentioned how she despises the overuse of filters and Photoshopping as it misrepresents women as well as adds to the unrealistic expectations we are faced/compared with.  Good to know I’m not alone in this thought process. Maybe we’re all starting to wake up. Maybe. 🙂

**As an affiliate, I make a small portion of sales made via links in this blog.