Snapchat filters are pushing Eurocentric beauty standards for women of color

When you open Snapchat to take a picture, it’s natural to use a filter — I do it all the time. We all know that filters, with the clear skin and bit of makeup they give you, set unrealistic beauty standards. However, we don’t talk enough about how the standards those filters hold disproportionately target women of color.

Recently, when I’ve swiped through filters for my pictures, I’ve noticed that filters lighten my skin tone and make my nose thinner. I’m not the only person, either. As far back as 2016, people were noticing the microaggressive racism in these lenses, citing beauty filters’ tendency to shrink and/or whiten ethnic features. It’s a bit jarring when I open the camera and see features on myself that I’ve finally learned to accept being altered with the intention of mak- ing me pretty. The camera is telling me that, in order to be beautiful, I need to look more white.

What’s frustrating to me, though, is that the exact features I sought to change growing up are features that white women appropriate now. For example, while the filters make my nose and jaw smaller, they tend to make my lips larger. I remember being made fun of for the size of my lips in elementary school, but now lip filler has grown increasingly popular among white women.

There are also some filters dedicated to making you look tanner. It reminds me of being in high school and seeing my white friends obsessing over getting darker during the summer. It’s ironic because they certainly don’t want to be Black, yet having a bit of color to their skin makes them feel prettier.

A similar situation can be said for Asian women. The makeup some filters apply make the eyes more narrow, accomplishing the “fox eye” makeup trend. Again, this exact look is something that Asian women have been mocked for.

Women of color’s features should not be a trend. We should not only be considered beautiful when our beauty serves the oppressor. For me, I try to avoid filters that change my face too much, but those aren’t always easy to find. The ones that make my face adhere more closely to Eurocentric beauty standards are the ones that show up first in my suggestions.

Kids are more involved with technology and the internet nowadays, and filters like these are easily accessible. I worry about what this access is going to make young people of color think of themselves.There is already a generally large discrepancy in media representation, shaping the way children of color view themselves. What’ll happen to their self-perception if we use social media to perpetuate the idea that Black cannot be synonymous with beauty?

I know that if I had been able to use social media filters at a young age, the contempt I had for my skin color would have been much worse. After all, those filters make me look how I wanted to look as a kid.

I don’t want young girls to grow up as insecure as I did — hating their large lips and lack of a button nose — because those insecurities have followed me to this day. I notice it when I walk into a classroom and I’m the only person of color in the class. I notice it when I go shopping and the majority of models are white. I notice it when I read a book and the main female love interest is white. I notice it every time I’m worried about whether or not someone will be attracted to me because I don’t have European features.

Eurocentric beauty standards are ingrained in the everyday lives of Black women, and it’s exhausting. We open our phones and are met with standards we never can and never should have to achieve. Our features are beautiful as they are, and Snapchat needs to stop telling me otherwise.