The Facetune Epidemic WHO IS TO BLAME?

Since downloading Facetune in 2014, Michelle* has used the photo editing app on almost every image she’s posted online. Within minutes, she can change her chin, jawline, and cleavage, and slim her waist, thighs, and arms. “I’d basically just make everything smaller,” she says. Though she’s since opted out of perfecting her acne-prone skin in a bid to be real with the young women who follow her, changes to her face still occur in almost every other area. Like most Facetune users who were on social media in its adolescent years, Michelle began using the app because it seemed as though everyone around her was. “I have surgical precision with my editing now but back then everyone was still figuring it out. You would see people using the wrong tool all the time. They would completely warp the background or over-edit their face until it looked like a blur. “I still tweak the same things, just not as much or as obviously now,” she explains.

The hugely popular selfie-editing app is now so widely known that its name has become interchangeable with ‘editing’. Since its inception, Facetune has scored endorsements from celebrities and influencers including Khloé Kardashian, who once described it as “life-changing” and “the only way to live,” Chrissy Teigen, Busy Philipps, and James Charles. Millions of photos circulating the internet have been meticulously altered, most of which are done in a way