Today, I want to discuss the ethics of photo editing on social media.
I'm not talking about upping the brightness of a photo a little bit, or turning down the contrast on the photo a little bit or changing the temperature of the photo a little bit.
No, I'm talking about retouching the image.
I'm talking about going in and changing the image completely, smoothing out your skin, making your waist a little smaller, making your toes a little less wide, making your jawline a little sharper.
I'm talking about going in and retouching an image.
Prior to apps like Facetune, you had to know how to use a professional photo editing software like Photoshop.
In order to truly change an image and make it look believable, you needed to open up your computer, open up Photoshop, and, like, get in there.
It was not easy.
Photoshop is not easy.
I, to this day, don't know how to use Photoshop.
It is really challenging and time consuming to use.
So I think for a while there, social media was pretty real, right?
There wasn't really an option for the everyday person to retouch their images.
But now, with apps like Facetune, anyone can go in and make their lips bigger, make their jawline sharper, make their toes longer, smooth out their skin, do whatever they can possibly imagine to an image.
And it's never been easier.
Photo editing apps in general are incredibly accessible now and incredibly easy to use.
I mean, don't get me wrong, there are some people that don't have the magic thumb when it comes to using Facetune, and you can tell that they facetune the image, but there are some people out there that are so fucking good at it that you can't even tell they used an app like Facetune.
I find it so fascinating how it's not just celebrities and public figures who facetune in Photoshop their photos.
It's also the person who works next to you at work, or the person who's sitting at a traffic light next to you.
It's like anyone and everyone can and probably is editing and retouching their photo in some way on social media.