Social media has become such an integral part of modern society that the way in which we represent ourselves online has become important above all else. Social media platforms, such as Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Tumblr, and Twitter, each present manners for us to represent ourselves and to form a unique identity online. Snapchat, specifically, allows a person to send pictures (snapchats or “snaps) to specific friends for a limited amount of time before they disappear indefinitely or to post a picture for all of their friends to see for a period of 24 hours on their “story”. As Snapchat has grown since its initial release in 2011, they have continued to add on new features, for example, colored lenses allowing a snapchatter to change their pictures to black and white or add a tint. In 2015, Snapchat introduced the “Lens” feature which involves face-altering technology allowing Snapchatters to change how they appear by accentuating certain features or placing computer-generated animal ears, glasses, hearts, etc over their faces. Since the creation of Lenses, many snapchat users have adapted to using these with every single snap that is sent, which is altering how they represent their realities.
Before moving further into the analysis and significance of these lenses it is important to look further into the origin. The first lens released was a face altering lens in which the snapchatter was given big eyes, rosey cheeks, and when they opened their mouth, a rainbow would flow out. The introduction of lenses is related to the idea of augmented reality. Augmented reality is when real world objects, in this case the face of the snapchatter, are altered by technology providing a computerized view of the real world. Snapchat bought this face-altering technology from another small company called Looksery and immediately integrated it into their app, and while they are now not the only social media platform to have lenses, theirs are unique in the high definition and ability to truly alter a user’s face.
Giving users the ability to alter their faces has sparked the relevance of the question: how does the trend and use of snapchat lenses contribute to the creation of identity and the promotion of western beauty standards in young women? I would like to explain how lenses relate to the production of the self and creation of identity on social media as well as how lenses promoted western beauty standards for women. With respect to the creation of the self and identity, I plan to look at how snapchat users present themselves using lenses to different audiences, the effect of different types of lenses and how they are received by examining our shared conceptual map, specifically by analyzing the signifiers within the lenses themselves as to indicate the preferred meaning. In relation to the promotion of western beauty standards, I plan to look at beauty as a social construct, as well as how western beauty standards are defined in relation to gender stereotypes.
To study this, I used a combination of primary and secondary research. In reference to primary, I documented the snapchat usage of one volunteer subjects. Specifically, I looked at how many snapchats they were sending per day and how many times they used Snapchats with beauty lenses, other types of lenses, and no lens at all. Additionally, I conducted a brief survey asking Snapchat users about which lens they use mainly, why they use lenses, and the types of lenses they would send to different recipients. With respect to secondary research, I looked at other methods as to how we represent reality or what a consumer wants reality to be, in addition to theories about the creation of identity. Additionally, I looked at beauty as a social construct and how this lends to the creation of western beauty standards.
I concluded Snapchat ultimately allows a woman to create an “ideal” version of herself through the use of featured lenses that promote and conform to western beauty standards, which lends itself to creating a culture with a single idea of what is beautiful and can lend to the development of anxieties in women. To help justify this claim I will first begin by exploring the different types of Snapchat lenses; beauty as a social construct; how our sense of realness has adapted because of digital platforms such as snapchat; and ideas about the creation of identity via social media and the importance of affirmation.
Types of Snapchat Lenses
For the purpose of this analysis, I have identified and labeled three categories of Snapchat Lenses: Beauty, Funny, and Cute. Beauty lenses are usually made to look natural but still used to glamour the snapchat user. These types of lenses often provide a natural glow to the skin, lighten skin color, enlarge the eyes, add makeup, make the face more angular and smooth over existing flaws. As was concluded from my survey, people often use beauty lenses to send snapchats to someone their interested in. This is most likely due to the signifiers that are associated with beauty lenses to indicate the preferred meaning to the recipient. As can be seen in Appendix A, features of the beauty lens become signifiers to the person receiving the snapchat, for example the addition of makeup and the smoothing over of flaws leads to the signified concept that the snapchat user most likely wants the recipient to think that they are attractive.
Moving into the next types of lens, Funny lenses are made to over-exaggerate or distort certain features of face. These types of lenses essentially make someone look unattractive, whether if that is by distorting their face completely by enlarging their mouth and eyes to make them appear like a monster of some sort, or by adding a pair of glasses and a few wrinkles to make a user look like a grandma, as can be seen in Appendix A. Results of my survey indicated that funny lenses were most likely to be used to send to a user’s friend, again. most likely because of the signifiers within the snapchat which indicate to the recipient that the original user is attempting to be funny or incite laughter by attempting to make their face less attractive.
Finally, there are also Cute lenses which are not made to look natural, but still glamour the snapchat user. These lenses still smooth out ones flaws, lighten the skin tone, make the face more angular, while also placing computer generated add-ons to the face such as glasses, animal ears, devil ears etc. These types of lenses can be used to send to friends or someone you’re interested in as they almost exist as a mid-way point between beauty lenses and funny lenses. The existing signifiers such as the inclusion of smoothing out flaws, as can be seen in Appendix A, still give the meaning that this lens is made to make the user look more attractive to the recipient, yet the user is okay with the recipient knowing that a lens is being used and these computer-generated add-ons may indeed incite laughter like a funny lens, demonstrating both a beautiful and funny side of the user to the recipient.
Each of the meanings that come across from the lenses, as I have stated above, are only able to be deduced because of the shared conceptual map of snapchat users. This shared conceptual map makes it possible for snapchat users to communicate effectively, understand each other and to exchange meaning, making sense of the snapchats in the same way. As we know from the constructionist view, as explained by Stuart Hall, meaning is constructed via two systems of representation, shared conceptual maps and shared language. These Snapchat users have created their own language and map which has been universally accepted by all snapchat users so that people understand the preferred meaning of the snapchats they receive and send. That being said, Snapchat users have, in essence, created a sense of an ideally pretty or beautiful snapchat, which contributes to the idea that beauty is socially constructed, specifically within this virtual community as well as other environments.
Beauty as a Social Construct
The concept of feminine beauty can be defined as “the socially constructed notion that physical attractiveness is one of women’s most important assets, and something all women should strive to achieve and maintain”. These beauty ideals, which vary by culture, are based on heteronormative ideas and can have drastic effects on all women. For the purpose of this paper we will focus on western beauty standards. Western beauty standards can be defined as ideal features for a woman as promoted by social media, fashion, television and other industries. These beauty standards have spread throughout the world due to their exposure and presence in all aspects of media. Stereotypically, the ideal woman has: high cheekbones, large eyes, a thin, defined jaw, full lips, a lighter, even skin tone, a natural glow, narrow nose. Women often experience pressure to conform to these ideals which can inspire immense psychological repercussions, such as eating disorders, depressions and other anxieties or insecurities.
As previously mentioned, Snapchat users have created their definition of beautiful. Each snapchat lens embodies these western beauty standards which can be seen in Appendix B with direct comparisons. Each lens, even ones that are supposed to be amusing, moves to narrow the nose, further define the jaw, smooth away skin flaws, and make lips fuller, which are each standards of western beauty. Most Snapchat users don’t realize how their faces are being manipulated to the point of promoting these standards. However, this just reinforces the idea of western beauty standards as the only true form of what is beautiful and attractive, which lends to how beauty is socially constructed by social norms, and how social media has become such an integral part of today’s culture.
Looking in terms of gender stereotypes, as mentioned before, feminine beauty is extremely heteronormative, meaning that this mostly affects women and is often enforced by men. The original technology that was used in the creation of Snapchat lenses that was owned by Looksery and then bought by Snapchat, was created by two men. This technology, similar to Snapchat lenses now, promoted western beauty standards under the guise of creatively altering your face for amusement, when in reality they were simply furthering the social construction of beauty. Relating back to the constructionist view of meaning, the shared conceptual map and shared language to discuss these beauty standards allows for them to continue to exist.
These lenses allow women with an easy and accessible mechanism to clearly conform to western beauty standards. When the lens comes off these women are left with fixating on their flaws and how they don’t fit the ideal definition of beautiful. This fixation only promotes mental illnesses such as body dysmorphic disorder. Body dysmorphic disorder is “ a body-image disorder characterized by persistent and intrusive preoccupations with an imagined or slight defect in one’s appearance.” People who suffer from Body Dysmorphia will fixate on their features for hours to a point where it becomes obsessive. Using Snapchat lenses allows them to almost cover up their flaws and create a new version of themselves even if it is behind the lens, which gives rise to an adapted sense of realness within themselves.
Adapted Sense of Realness
Due to digital and social media, internet users have new ways of experiencing themselves as real. Similarly, they have new ways to create a sense of reality and authenticity that they can present to audiences, which gives rise to an adapted sense of realness which can differ from what the truth of the reality genuinely is.
Speaking in a general sense, beyond Snapchat, people can use mediums such as Facebook or Instagram to post updates about their life. In an article by Molly Thornberg, a working mother who has taken keen interest in the research of technology and the digital age, she analyzes a video that showcases a man who constantly posts updates on his facebook page concerning the status of his life. Some of the featured posts were “Quit my dead-end job!”, “Finally Single!” and a picture of him supposedly drinking at a club. In reality, behind the screen, each of these posts were a lie. The Facebook user had gotten fired from his job, cheated on by his girlfriend, and was simply drinking by himself on the side of the road only to be encountered by a prostitute. He used social media to create this ideal version of himself which he orchestrated as authentic to show his friends that he was living his best life when, in actuality, he was on a downward spiral. The ability to create this false sense of reality seemed to temporarily help him with the horribleness that he was experiencing behind the screen, but ultimately reality caught up with him when he saw a picture of his girlfriend and her new boyfriend, prompting him to make a final post, “my life sucks…”. Soon thereafter, his friends stopped following his posts online when he actually admitted the truth and removed the glamour. Situations like this are exactly what cause fear in social media users: the fear of people not accepting your reality. However this does prompt ontological questions about the nature of being like who gets to decide what is real? In a sense, social media gives users that power to create whatever reality they want people to think. This power is unique to the digital age and helps to explain some of the reasons that people are drawn to social media platforms.
Each society, according to Michel Foucault, has a regime of truth. A “regime of truth” can be defined as “the types of discourses which [a society] accepts and makes function as truth, the mechanisms meant to distinguish truth, the means by which truth is sanctioned”. Focusing specifically on the mechanisms meant to distinguish the truth, social media has obscured these mechanisms as recipients of snapchats or viewers of instagram or facebook posts, are unaware of the truth of someone’s post. More often than not, people will simply accept it as the truth which has, in turn, expanded our society’s regime of truth.
Moreover, focusing back on Snapchat, snapchat lenses give users the power to manipulate reality and truth. Specifically, beauty lenses literally alter one’s face to make them appear more attractive. Snapchat users have taken this power to create presenses for themselves to the point where they will never not use a lens. After documenting the use of my volunteer subject, she repeatedly used the same beauty lens in all 20 of the snapchats she sent to the same individual, who was a person she was interested in. The recipient will come to accept these lensed pictures as what the sender normally looks like. When asked, the original sender simply said that she felt more comfortable using the lenses because she acknowledged how they made her look better and this is how she wanted to represent herself on this platform. The sender has created an alternative version of herself on Snapchat which she feels the need to maintain in every snapchat she sends. This idea relates to the final concept that will be discussed: the creation of identity and the importance of affirmation.
Creation of Identity and The Importance of Acceptance by Others
A large part of identity is formed by the manners in which individuals interact with others. In Erving Goffman’s sociology book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life published in 1959, he analyzes these social interactions very closely. Goffman asserts that when an individual is interacting with others, their goal is to guide the other person in the creation of a mental image and perception of themselves. They do this by fixing or changing certain aspects of their manner or appearance as an attempt to highlight their positive attributes and a clear desired impression. In this way, Goffman states that the presentation of the self is not a natural way of being and that it has become a subconscious routine. In connection to social media, this presentation of the self is relevant to the idea of being very selective in the things a user shares or sends to others so that they have complete power over shaping others perception.
Several studies suggest that adolescence and young adulthood are the most important years for the development of identity exploration. Elisabetta Crocetti, a Professor of Psychology, states “the biological, cognitive, and social changes that occur in adolescence stimulate young people to think about themselves, reflect on the kind of people they want to become, and find their place in society.” Roughly around 60% of Snapchat users are under the age of 24, meaning that the majority of users are at this highly susceptible place in the process of their identity formation. Social media platforms serve as an easy mechanism for identity exploration and experimentation. Naturally, an individual would want to embody an identity that incites acceptance and support in a community, especially a virtual community. As can be seen in the video discussed earlier, the facebook user is simply seeking affirmation in the form of Facebook “likes” from the things he chooses to post on his social media account.
Modern society puts such an emphasis on beauty, as was mentioned early when discussing beauty as a social construct. When a Snapchat user sends a snapchat or posts a picture to their story using a Beauty lens, and they receive affirmation or compliments due to the picture, they crave this continuous form of acceptance. In doing so, this idea of what is beautiful becomes a piece of their identity and the person that they wish to become.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Snapchat ultimately gives a woman the power to create an ideal version of herself on the social media platform through the use of featured lenses, specifically those designed to make a woman more attractive. These lenses promote and conform to western beauty standards, which lends itself towards reinforcing the social construction of beauty, inspiring an adapted sense of reality for woman and other social media users, and finally significantly affecting the development of identity and anxieties in women due to the need for acceptance. The primary research I conducted via my survey and documenting the use of Snapchat from three users reaffirmed my claim as the results suggested that women use these lenses to present themselves in a more attractive manner. While my secondary research helped to provide some background for my claims, herein lies a limitation to my study as identity formation and the development of anxiety for women specifically on social media isn’t a widely researched topic in terms of Snapchat. Some studies have focused on heavily on Facebook and Twitter with reference to the written word, but there seems to be a lack of analysis in terms of the influence of actual pictures. With this evolving importance of the virtual community, it is important to do continuous studies as to how the use of these platforms affect adolescents and young adults.
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