When we think of colonization, we tend to think in terms of the past. We think, of course, of the British, who colonized America in the early 17th century. Or maybe we think of the French who colonized parts of Africa. Perhaps we even think back as far as the Vikings' colonization of Greenland. But, the last places we would think of colonization is in one, in the present and two, in our pockets.
A new update to the popular social media picture-sharing app allows users to use a variety of filters to change the way they look. There is a filter that turns users into a dog. Another filter that squishes and contorts users’ faces making them look like a homunculus having an allergic reaction. And a few filters make users look “pretty.” Or, at least it reinforces the popular conception of “pretty.” The filter, for those who haven’t seen, narrows the nose and brings the nostrils together. It smooth’s over any flaws of the skin and widens the eyes while also making them just a shade lighter. The beauty filter, for all intents and purposes, contorts users’ faces into looking more European.
Though European colonization of physical land might be over, Snapchat’s “beauty” filter shows us that our standards of beauty are still, in a sense, under European rule. Beauty, therefore, is not so much in the eyes of the beholder, as it is the in the hands of those in power. Snapchat's “beauty” filter reinforces, to over one hundred million active users, that the quintessential image of physical beauty is still a narrow face, narrow nose and light colored eyes.
But, Snapchat is only one voice among many that are subtly suggesting that the European idea of physical beauty is the only one. It doesn’t take more than 15 minutes in a supermarket browsing the magazine section to see that white, European models are dominating everything from fashion magazines like Vogue to popular culture’s most sacred literature of celebrity gossip magazines. These messages of the European standard of physical beauty are heard and internalized by women of all races and ethnicities. We might chide our ancestors for wearing painful corsets and for binding their feet but today people endure skin bleaching, eyelid surgery, permanent hair straightening, and colored eye contacts in order to live up to Eurocentric beauty standards.
But like all stories of colonization, we have our revolutionaries. Over the past few years, there have been a number of campaigns resisting our European idea of beauty. Dove launched its “Campaign for Real Beauty” after hearing of a study that found only two percent of women consider themselves beautiful. Challenging the notion that straight hair is more desirable, a recent Dove advertisement shows girls to “Love Your Curls.” In the same fashion, photographer Pax Jones’ began the social media hash tag #UnfairandLovely
to encourage women of color to embrace their dark skin and as a counter to the skin lightening product called "Fair and Lovely." The recently formed feminist art collective, Sad Asian Girls Club, attacks Asian stereotypes as being silent and passive while also challenging society’s ideas of Asian beauty.We live in the era of a globalized economy, so why not globalize our standards of beauty too?
