Default Beauty

Being a person of less than advanced ability with all things technology, I had owned my Samsung Galaxy S6 for 8 months when I discovered the “beauty face” setting on my phone’s camera.

Beauty Face is a sliding scale that one can use on the selfie setting.  It activates by default (#8) if you use the front-facing camera. In effect, it airbrushes your face and gives you options to make your face look slimmer and your eyes look bigger.

“Wow Samsung. When you get a brand new phone and go to take a selfie and realise that the default setting on the front camera is automatically on “Beauty level 8” which evidently means: seriously airbrushed face. This means everyone who gets a new Samsung phone and flicks the front camera on is automatically being told ‘Hi, we’re Samsung and we think you look way better when we automatically airbrush your selfies for you, x 8!!’ Thanks @samsungmobile for the vote of confidence, I think I’ll keep my freckles and imperfections since this is how I look in 3D and this is how all my friends see me in real life. I hope young girls are buying iPhones instead of Samsungs. (Wait, do iPhones do this too?) To clarify – no apps here – this is Samsung’s DEFAULT FRONT CAMERA SETTING.”  ~Mel Wells, the author of “The Goddess Revolution”

So, I tried to be mad. I am, after all an advocate for loving your body just the way it is, a fighting feminist and a mother of three teenage girls. But, I’m not angry and here’s why:

Samsung isn’t forcing us to use the tool just like your local tattoo artist isn’t forcing us into their shops to get phoenix birds on our shoulder blades. It’s just a way to alter your image if you choose to. I do this most days with makeup.

“I’m going to do my makeup real quick”

This is make-up + Beauty Face “2”. Please note that I love both images. I enjoy how BF2 smooths my forehead scars, neck skin tags and cleavage wrinkles in photos although I’m still proud to share them with the real physical world.

I tweeze, exfoliate, moisturize, prime and conceal. This is followed by foundation, contouring, blush and highlighting with a translucent powder set.  Next, brow conditioning primer, powder brow fill followed by colored brow pomade and concealer sharpening. Next, I prime my eyelids, apply 3 shades and liquid liner. I then curl my eyelashes, glue and set false lashes and after that dries, blend my natural lashes into the false ones. Time for the last layer of overall face- another coat of concealer (under eye) and all over “warming” with a medium contour shade. Spray set. Then lip exfoliator/conditioner, lip liner, base color, blot, powder, liner, top color, blot, gloss.

If they ever sell a Beauty Face slider that transforms your actual face on the days that you chose to, I will buy it. (As long as I can still do my own brows- I really love doing that.)

Conclusion

Now, the “default” setting weirds me out a bit. Having to physically dial down the beauty setting just to look like you really look..that sends a message I think.

At Hot Tomato, you get to choose your “Default Beauty”. Did you know that? We don’t have a single box we put everyone in.  We want to photograph you. You get to tell us what kind of beauty you would like to capture. Here’s where you start- Tell Us

I would love to hear your thoughts on this. I’ll update the post with your comments.

Email them to hottomatopinupacademy@gmail.com

Written by hottomatopinupacademy8

Founder and former co-owner of Hot Tomato Pin-Up Academy,

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