Why the #GlowUp is actually traumatising Gen-Z

“I don’t want to look natural. Nothing about my life is natural…I need to be looking extra.” I’m watching Maral, a popular Gen-Z influencer give a tutorial about how to always look extra. Essentially, how to consistently achieve InstaFace.

You know InstaFace. It’s there smiling sexily in your subconscious as you unzip your makeup pouch and examine your face, the ultimate blank canvas. Cheekbones contoured, nose slimmed, lips plumped and eyeliner flicked until InstaFace smiles back at you from the mirror. Predictably, this trend began at that inexhaustible font of all internet trends—the Kardashians. Soon, makeup brands were tripping over their bronzers to promote it and the internet exploded with tutorials about how the Too Faced Lip Injection, Anastasia Beverly Hills Sun Dipped Glow Kit and Kylie Cosmetics’ Kylighter could make your life look like one jaunty sun-dipped ride with no pores. And if you want to know just how popular the trend is, here’s a quick fact: #InstaFace has 1.2 million posts. That’s about half a million posts more than #Gandhi.

But for Gen Z—the generation to which many of our children belong—using only makeup is so basic. Maral isn’t using Morphe makeup in her YouTube tutorial; she, along with millions of others has found a much easier way to morph her photos: FaceTune. “Normally I zoom into my face first and see what I want to do with my, uhhmm, face,” she says. In seconds, she has slimmed her nose, tilted her eyes, and plumped her lips. Her hands move like lightning as she zooms, pinches, snatches. I squint at her jawline which looks like it can cut glass. But apparently, I am very wrong; Maral is not happy. FaceTune comes to the rescue like a benevolent fairy godmother. A few quick swipes and the puffiness is gone. Zip, zap, zoom. Problem solved.

Gen-Z redefines pretty

Redefine Pretty, a project led by filmmaker Em Ford, asked several young women to participate in a neurological experiment. The participating women had their brains scanned while being shown flawless, retouched photos of models (precisely the kind of photos that we see on our Instagram feed every day). Researchers were trying to understand what happens to women’s brains when they look at these kinds of photos. What they discovered was astounding: as the women looked at the photos, MRI scans suggested that they were experiencing trauma. The findings took many of the participants by surprise. One woman thought that she was feeling aspiration as she looked at the models. But while looking at the photos, even though they knew that the photos were retouched, the women’s brain scans consistently signalled anxiety and trauma.

Here’s the problem: which teenage girl doesn’t see thousands of retouched photos every week?

In the dinosaur days, airbrushing was reserved for movie stars. It was the sole prerogative of movie stars to make other women feel insecure about themselves. But today, even the neighbour’s Instagrams can traumatise Gen-Z. And let’s not fool ourselves, this is a generation for whom digital perception is key. Google reports that every third photo taken by 18-to-24-year-olds was a selfie. Plastic surgeons across the world have seen significant upticks in patients under 30, mostly driven by selfie culture. Gen-Z cares deeply about how their faces look on a screen. That screen is their first playground and last refuge.

And while not every young woman in India is headed to the surgeon’s office, many are clawing and contouring their way to #InstaFace. As a result, the chasm between Instagram and reality keeps growing. I’m on the phone with Sania, a 15-year-old from Mumbai who is a self-confessed ‘FaceTune queen’. (Maybe it’s spelled ‘kween’ now, who knows?). I ask her what she likes about FaceTune. “Once you start, you can’t stop. It’s just so addictive,” she replies. FaceTune promises that you will ‘wow your friends with every selfie’. I ask Sania if her friends have been ‘wowed’. “Oh my god, yes. I get so many likes and it’s so easy to do glow-ups.” That’s when it hits me: this is a generation growing up amidst #GlowUp.

But I can see Sania’s point. Morphing your face is so easy (and free), not to mention rewarding. You get so many likes. You feel like the centre of the digital universe. But here’s what Sania doesn’t know: every time she gets a like, her brain releases dopamine, which gives her that giddy, feel-good feeling. It’s the same neural circuitry exploited by casinos and cocaine to make you feel great—and almost immediately need another hit. Soon enough, Sania will want another hit, so she’ll head back to FaceTune to morph and upload another picture. No wonder we’re all hanging around Instagram like meth addicts.

As I’m coming to terms with the new world that Gen-Z is inheriting, Maral’s video tutorial continues. FaceTune goes well beyond the face, and Maral is now working on her body. The first thing to get tuned is her butt. “I’m going to get a Brazilian butt lift anyway, so honestly this is what I’ll look like in a few months,” she explains. She quickly adjusts her breasts, snatches her waist à la Kim and slims her arms. She is now the digital embodiment of #SlimThicc, which expects women to have waists the size of a child’s wrist with boobs the size of the Titanic’s hull. I won’t lie, Maral looks incredible. She just doesn’t look human.

What’s next

As social media apps become more pervasive, I wonder if we will end up erasing ourselves and our humanity from our own photographs? Will future generations only see photo after photo of picture-perfect cyborgians living nothing but their jaunty, sun-kissed #BestLife every day? And if we have only one definition of beauty, then will everything else be considered ugly?

When I was talking to Sania, she told me that she uses FaceTune because she “want[s] to look just flawless. I asked her if she manages to look flawless in real life too. “It’s much harder to be flawless IRL,” she admitted, “that’s why I prefer to just stay home and talk to my friends on Insta.”

Sania is right about one thing: it is hard to be flawless in real life. But as far as I can tell, it’s even harder to always be someone else. To quote the very wise Freddy Birdy (Instagram does have a few good things), here’s my advice, Gen-Z: you may as well be who you are.

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