This is me on a casual Sunday night at home, writing. No makeup. Unfixed hair. You know, my normal look.
For almost 21 years, I have never been the girl who wears a lot of makeup. That's not because I don't know how or because I have anything against it, I am honestly just pretty lazy when it comes to putting on makeup and have gotten used to not wearing anything on my face. I watch makeup videos on YouTube, and to be completely honest, I get jealous of how amazing other people get their makeup to look. It has become an art form, and I am in awe of the skill and precision others have achieved.
That being said, seeing as I am lazy when it comes to makeup as I stated before, I was curious to discover how "real" the makeup apps could make my face look, and if I would prefer it.
I did a search, and the most popular app I found was Makeup Plus. It's free to download, and as soon as the camera came on, it had already started altering my face. It smoothed out my skin, brightened my skin tone, and hid my freckles and blemishes. The blemishes I didn't care about, but I genuinely like my freckles.
Once I actually took the picture, it automatically changed everything about how I looked in that moment. The app thinned my face, lightened my hair, contoured my cheeks and chin, darkened my eyebrows, and put on full makeup including a thick set of lashes. It even changed my eye color a bit. All of this happened without me even choosing anything. What it changed my face to is what I assume it decided would make me look "better." This was somewhat unsettling to me.
Even though I'm the one who decided to experiment with this app, I was perplexed by the automatic changes because I didn't expect it to change anything unless I was the one choosing what to change.
After it was done "fixing" my appearance, I sat there looking at the picture.
I flipped back and forth between the original and the current state of my picture more times than I can count. I saw every single thing that was changed, or made better by the app, and I hated it. Despite the fact that I don't have perfect skin or flawless features, I didn't think so many characteristics of my face needed to be improved. I didn't think they needed to be changed, because they don't.
My face isn't perfect. Not one person's face on this earth is perfect. Yeah, I will do my makeup from time to time and will sometimes think something about myself needs to be changed, but in reality I'm not sure I would actually change it. The features of my face are the result of who I am. The laugh lines, scars, freckles, dark circles, blemishes—they all make me look like me. No one else has this face, so why would I want to change anything about it?
