![]() The aforementioned elements of textured skin have always had a sordid history with human beings. It raises questions about the impact of social media-and photo editing-on our attitude towards pores, fine lines, and other perfectly normal parts of our anatomy, which could be damaging our mental health. People are looking for perfect skin.”Īdivi is one of many concerned spectators from online skin care communities who have noticed an alarming trend: more and more women are obsessing over non-existent problems with what appears to be perfectly healthy skin. The subreddit has had to implement rules in order to prevent such posts from piling up, although many still seep through the cracks. “We had a real problem where users were asking what was wrong with their skin or asking how to fix things like perfectly normal nasolabial folds-and they were submitting pictures of their normal skin,” says Maya Adivi, a 31-year-old digital nomad and r/SkincareAddiction moderator originally from Canada. It’s something that’s raised alarm amongst the community’s veteran members. It’s the ‘what’s wrong with my face?’ sub.” “It’s no longer the r/SkincareAddiction sub. “I am begging the moderators of this sub to start a new sub or just please do something to save this sub,” one distressed user lamented earlier this year. Requests for help to fix “enlarged pores” are almost endless the constant stream of people obsessing over perfectly healthy skin has resulted in desperate pleas for members to remember what their skin is actually supposed to look like. On Reddit’s skin care communities, like r/SkincareAddiction, which is nearly two million members strong, 22-year-old women are asking for help fighting fine lines that are simply part of a normal human face. The number of laser skin resurfacing procedures, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, increased by 484 percent between 20.īut while our wallets point towards increased interest-if not obsession-with matching our IRL skin to what we see on social media, our behavior online all but confirms it. Startups that give people remote access to personalized, prescription-level skin care products are attracting millions of dollars in investments. Sales of collagen, a protein thought to keep skin looking youthful and smooth, are booming. Skin care concepts like “glass skin”-a Korean beauty trend designed to make pores and texture vanish- have attracted billions of views on TikTok. ![]() The chasm between what we see on the internet-a virtual space which the average American inhabits for almost two hours daily-and what we see when we look in the mirror is, increasingly, enormous.Īll this uncanny smoothness is having an undeniable impact on the real world. These sorts of images are produced by your yoga teacher, your mother’s friends, everyone you went to high school with, and the person who grooms your dog-and they all live in your phone, in perfect poreless condition, accessible 24-hours-a-day on social media. To make matters worse, it’s not just celebrities and tech companies fueling the proliferation of dolphin skin across the internet. Sometimes it’s even done without us realizing: companies like Samsung and Apple have built technology into our phones which automatically make our skin appear silken and strangely smooth in selfies, transforming our complexions to the point where they resemble waxed apples or laminate flooring. It’s visible in the beauty filters that are available through apps like Snapchat and TikTok, which turn the texture of our largest organ into liquid. ![]() It’s visible in the images that celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Jennifer Lopez-who are in their 40s and 50s, respectively-post online, revealing skin so smooth it could be glass. Because, despite the fact we now take more pictures of ourselves than ever before, the way we represent our skin online is wildly inaccurate. In fact, it’d be forgiven for thinking we were made from something closer in texture to plastic, rather than flesh. If an alien beamed down to earth and had relied solely on social media influencers to build its understanding of human biology, it would be forgiven for thinking we were close relatives of dolphins, and covered in nothing but smooth, poreless skin.
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