White with Envy First Draft

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Erin Moore Professor Eriksen English 210 November 16, 2023 White with Envy – First Draft In 2015, Snapchat became the first social media app to launch augmented reality (AR) filters. The first set of filters – designed in-house by Snapchat – enabled users to adorn their selfies with flower crowns, rainbow tongues, wiggly puppy ears, and a handful of other cartoonish effects. It was an innocent era. Fast forward to 2023 and there are now millions of user generated AR filters available across Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok. According to a 2017 press release from Instagram, AR filters help users “transform into a variety of characters that make you smile or laugh.” But are these filters also encouraging cultural appropriation amongst white women?

Face filters have gone from mostly comedic to largely cosmetic. Though there are millions of beautifying filters, most of them refashion your face into the same image: slim nose, widened and lifted cheek bones, plump lips, and – if you’re white – noticeably darker skin. As New Yorker journalist Jia Tolentino observes, the aesthetics of “Instagram Face” are “distinctly white but ambiguously ethnic” (“The Rise of Instagram Face”).

It’s easy to dismiss this as a harmless internet trend – but it isn’t. Multiple plastic surgeons and journalists have written about the increasing number of young, predominantly white women entering cosmetic offices seeking treatments that will plump their lips, angle their eyes, and transform them into living versions of their digital fantasies (Jacob et al., Rajanala et al., Hunt). Furthermore, some plastic surgeons point out that the large lips, fuller cheeks, and darker skin tones that are hallmarks of AR filters capitalize on features that have been historically associated with Black women (Jacob and Moreira, 2020).

Most conversations surrounding Instagram Face have focused on women’s freedom of expression (Ryan-Mosley), self esteem (Hunt), and potential body dysmorphia (Rajanala et al.).

Few studies, however, have questioned the deeper cultural reasons why white women pursue this

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look, when they themselves have been rewarded for their whiteness. This article seeks to answer the question, “Why do white women appropriate the facial features of Black women, and how does AI filtering aid them?” Drawing on Festinger’s social comparison theory, critical race scholars, and feminist literature, this article explores how cultural stories around sexuality, modern feminist perspectives, and narrow definitions of beauty encourage white women to appropriate the “most desired” features of Black women.

When we as white women deeply reflect on the racialized roots of many of our beauty goals, we will recognize how recreating these looks with invasive and non-invasive procedures unintentionally upholds white supremacy, harms minority women, and reveals deeper fissures in our character. Furthermore, by identifying the emotional beliefs that underlie our cultural appropriation, we can carve out a personal path for healing internalized race envy.

The Rise of Instagram Face In 2019, Florencia Solari, the creator behind the viral Instagram filter vedettee++, took to the internet to defend facial distortion filters. In her 1,500 word manifesto, Solari ties the usage of facial filters to a larger democratic agenda: “This is about FREEDOM. It’s about preserving the most valuable and unique thing we own: who we are. Our individuality” (Solari, 2019).

While on paper facial distortion filters promote individuality, in practice they seem to be leading white women to the same aesthetic – an aesthetic which journalist Jia Tolentino refers to as, “Instagram Face.” As one New York city makeup artist describes it, Instagram Face is comprised of “an overly tan skin tone, a South Asian influence with the brows and eye shape, an African-American influence with the lips, a Caucasian influence with the nose, and a cheek structure that is predominantly Native American and Middle Eastern” (Tolentino, “The Rise of Instagram Face”). Tolentino, who is Filipino American herself, reflects, “It’s as if the algorithmic tendency to flatten everything into a composite of greatest hits had resulted in a beauty ideal that favors white women capable of manufacturing a look of rootless exoticism.”

It appears that this desire to be seen as “exotic” is more than just a digital daydream. In 2019, London-based cosmetic injector Tijion Esho coined the term “Snapchat Dysmorphia” to describe the rising phenomenon of young women entering his practice in hopes of being turned into living versions of their filtered selves (Hunt, “Faking it”). In the eight years following the introduction of AR face filtering on social media, the rise in women seeking lip filler has been so

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dramatic that the American Society of Plastic Surgeons gave social media shoutout in their 2022 Procedural Statistics Release, stating “platforms like Instagram and TikTok play a big role in shaping beauty trends. Many influencers shared their experiences with lip fillers, making the procedure less intimidating” (12).

Most of the journalistic and academic literature surrounding Instagram Face and Snapchat Dysmorphia has been sympathetic to young women. Guardian journalist Elle Hunt interviewed three young women, all of whom point to long standing insecurities with their facial features and a desire to “look like their selfie” as reasons for seeking cosmetic injections. In a JAMA article directed at cosmetic injectors and surgeons, Rajanala et al. took a more pathologizing approach, suggesting that women who seek cosmetic procedures to resemble their filtered selfies are most likely experiencing body dysmorphic disorder (443). Doctors DeAsia Jacob and Andrea Moreira are the only plastic surgeons so far to go on the record in a peer-reviewed journal acknowledging the the obvious racial undertones of the #foxeye trend and lip enhancements (“The Dark Side of Aesthetic Surgery,” 587). Their biting observations on cultural appropriation, however, culminate in a radically unradical direction for other injectors, concluding “It is not up to us as surgeons to dissuade patients from performing reasonable and safe procedures that enhance the patient's self-esteem” (583).

While most of the existing literature on Instagram Face and Snapchat Dysmorphia is relatively race-blind, this is not the first time white women have tried to replicate the biological features of Black women. In the 1920s, white women purchased Bakeroil in droves, hoping to reproduce Josephine Baker’s iconic “"la peau brune" (brown skin) on their own bodies (Chresfeld). Lip filler is not a new, internet-induced trend either. As Olivia Cassano reveals in “A Brief History of Lip Augmentation,” silicone lip fillers were used as early as the 1960s, giving white celebrities like Goldie Hawn’s the infamous “trout pout.” In 1979, white actress Bo Derrick wore cornrows throughout her role in Ten, garnering so much acclaim for the look that mainstream media began referring to the hairstyle as “Bo braids.” These examples demonstrate that AR face filtering has not ushered in a new beauty standard for white women. The desire to emulate Black style and Black features has been an integral part of white history. As Nylon beauty reporter Sara Jin Li puts it, “Beauty, it seems, is only cognizant of nonwhite features when it fits a Eurocentric agenda, and tech has only rewarded the issue. If we apply the "life imitates art" philosophy, then AR filters are indeed parroting a systemic issue.”

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How AR Filters are Shortening the Cognitive Leap Festinger’s comparison theory posits that people have an innate desire to evaluate themselves and will engage in a social comparison with people who are “similar of like” (Frisby, 326). Following Festinger’s original definition, which dates back almost 70 years to 1954, it would follow that white women would be unlikely to compare themselves to Black women because of the racial difference, and therefore lack of this the requisite “similar like” to make a comparison.

AR filters, however, are upending Festinger’s original tenants of social comparison. By enabling white women to try on the facial features of other races superimposed over their own face, AR filters make it possible for white women to form cross-racial comparisons and evaluations, while believing they are simply looking at a “similar other.”

Can One Race Really Appropriate a Biological Feature?

Some critics argue that no race owns a certain feature, and that the position of this paper is rooted in essentialist beliefs about race. After all, are Angelina Jolie and Diana Ross not quintessential examples of white and Black women whose natural features defy racial stereotypes?

While facial and body features are not the only determinants of one’s racial and cultural belonging, they are often used as proxies. Throughout history, lip size, nose size, booty size, and eye shape were used as the basis for both cultural celebration and violent domination. We needn’t look further than America’s own history of racist caricatures to see these stereotypes play out, and to understand why many races feel protective when the features that were once used to justify their discrimination are now technologically and surgically recreated on white bodies.

There is also a robust body of research identifying the physical form as a potential site of cultural appropriation. Rogers defined cultural appropriation as “the use of a culture’s symbols, artifacts, genres, rituals, or technologies by members of another culture”(474). He further breaks down cultural appropriation into four distinct subgroups, the most relevant to this article being cultural exploitation: “the appropriation of elements of a subordinated culture by a dominant culture without substantive reciprocity, permission, and/or compensation” (474). Crokett

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expanded on Roger’s definition to include not only “artifacts, rituals, and technologies,” but also “phonetic conventions, style, fashion, music, and one’s physical form.” (Crokett qtd. in Lee, 5) In her groundbreaking dissertation, Darlene Lee proposed that “race-envy” leads to cultural appropriation when “individuals who are dissatisfied with specific physical features and the cultural membership ascribed to them may utilize cosmetic surgery as a tool to quell that dissatisfaction, as non-surgical and surgical cosmetic procedures are commonly performed on particular body areas that cause cognitive discomfort” (11).

Though white women are known to appropriate the facial features and styles of other minority cultures, such as the #foxeye look (Jacobs and Moreira, 587), this article looks specifically at reasons why white women appropriate the physical aesthetics of Black women.

White Girls Wanna Just Wanna Have…

Body image research reveals that white women of all ages wish to obscure their Caucasian features, both online and off. In their landmark study on appearance beliefs and the internalization of beauty ideals, Jefferson and Stake found that white women were consistently dissatisfied with their lips, flat buttocks, and pale skin (400). Of the 67% of white survey participants who wished to change their skin color, 97% said they wanted to darken their skin (Jefferson and Stake, 403).

Modern industry cosmetic statistics corroborate these observations. According to data from Euromonitor, the self-tanning beauty category grew 70 percent in the United States between 2017 and 2022, reaching $304 million in sales (Mzizi). Buttock implants and butt lifts are up 889% from ten years ago, and dermal filler procedures increased 256% between 2012 – three years before the first AI face filter rolled out – and 2022 (American society for Plastic Surgeons). Notably, Caucasians make up 78% of filler patients in 2020, compared to only 5% African American (American society for Plastic Surgeons 2020). So why do white women expend so much time and money trying to recreate the Black form?

Note: I’m sadly running out of time to finish this first draft before I need to turn it in, so I’m going to stop my detailed discussion here! Below are bullet points for the remaining sections of this research:

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Racialized Constructions of Sexuality For centuries, the white imagination has hyper-sexualized Black women, leaving white women with a deep-rooted association of Black features with sexuality. In this section, I’ll discuss the historical mistreatment and misrepresentations of Black women as promiscuous “Jezebels,” and how these stereotypes have carried forth into the 20th and 21st century media.

I’ll also discuss the “exotification” of mixed race individuals (as shown by Waring), which highlights the pervasive sentiment that a mixture of white and Black features is most desireable.

I’ll then offer real-life examples of how celebrities like Iggy Azalea and Kim Kardashian have capitalized on this trend by making themselves racially ambiguous. Finally, I’ll review Lee’s anonymous surveys, which found that white women were more likely than Black women to recommend appropriative cosmetic injectables and surgery for both social (economic) and intrapersonal (sexual) reasons (45, 48).

What’s Profitable is Progressive Historical and modern media suggests that white women mimic the Black form as a way of upping their own sexual appeal. While old-school feminists may have turned their nose up at such self-objectification, the fourth wave of feminism teaches women that playing up one’s sex appeal is progressive, because it’s profitable. In this section, I’ll explore how modern feminism is not just broadly compatible with capitalism but actually served by it. As such, any methods to up one’s marketability (even that which appropriative) receives a hall pass by many of today’s feminists. A great example of this is Julia Fox who, when asked if she thought “being a man’s muse was participating in the patriarchy,” responded “For sure..but then again, as a woman, we have to get it where we can. If I can be a muse and get something out of it and advance myself…I’m gonna take it.” (Vanity Fair, 2023). While the fourth wave feminist movement doesn’t encourage appropriation outright, it seems to extend a blessing to any self-care a woman may pursue in the name of self-esteem and economic gain. And if there’s one thing the media and Kardashian empire have shown us, co-opting Black aesthetics will make you rich.

Narrow Definitions, Shallow Attachments

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By understanding how Black women have long-buffered themselves from race envy, we also discover clues as to why white women are so susceptible to it. Several studies have shown that “African American women tend to have greater body image satisfaction and are more resistant to the iconic White beauty standard,” (Milkie, qtd. in Lee). Research attribute this imperviousness to broader definitions of beauty in the African American community to include personality, attitude, and character in addition to physical appearance ( Jefferson and Stake, 398).

Unlike Black women, white women have had the advantage of seeing themselves frequently represented in the media, meaning white women rarely have to look outside mainstream media for representations of themselves. This has an adverse impact on two fronts: it’s buffered white women from becoming resourceful with where they look for their idols, and it’s cognitively primed them to be more susceptible to whatever ideal is in front of them, without much critical discernment.

Jefferson and Stake also note that, “The development of culturally specific beauty standards among [African American women] may be attributed, in part, to the broader civil rights movement in which African Americans came to take on new pride in their culture and heritage” (398). Most white women, at least in America, do not carry as radical or flattering a cultural story, and therefore, do not carry the same kind of pride in their white features, making it not only easier to abandon them, but actively seek to abandon to assuage their “cognitive discomfort” (Lee, 11).

Lee found that white women, unlike African American women, were likely to endorse appropriative cosmetic procedures, regardless of media exposure, suggesting that white women harbor a deep-seated discomfort with their natural features (48). As bell hooks puts it, “What is clear now is that the West’s fascination with the primitive has to do with its own crises in identity…​​Cultural appropriation of the Other assuages feelings of deprivation and lack that assault the psyches of radical white youth.” (Eating the Other, 367, 370) Conclusion It is unlikely that the average white woman is thinking this critically about her race and the history of whiteness when making aesthetic decisions. Similar to the widespread misidentification of AAVE linguistic styles for modern “Internet slang” (Chery), it’s

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to-be-expected that white women are mislabeling their pursuit of Black aesthetics as a pursuit of an internet and pop-culture induced trend.

But lack of awareness doesn’t mean it’s not rooted in subconscious racial stereotypes and race envy. Kitwana, author of, Why White Kids Love Hip Hop, believes white people have more awareness and agency than they let on, “Talk long enough to almost any white kid into hip-hop, and he or she will openly acknowledge a fascination with Black culture.”

A critical look at the theories outlined here, combined with a willingness to lower one’s defenses, may bring some white women closer to figuring out if they are, indeed, defining their beauty goals out of racial envy. If there’s anything white women should borrow from Black women, it should be broader definitions of beauty, critical awareness of media, and pride in their own cultural history. And if you feel ashamed of white history, then it’s time to help write a new chapter for white history.

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