Technology enables photo editing that feeds into unrealistic beauty expectations

by Simra Zargar

Photoshoots with friends, birthday posts, profle pictures. All taken in moments of joy, but anonymous senior Mia can’t help but notice every single faw. Unsatisfed, Mia remembers: she is only a simple touch-up away from perfection.

In ninth grade, Mia frst started using the app Airbrush to add a creative touch to her photos. Adding glitter backgrounds and unique settings seemed like a fun hobby, until this seemingly naïve and playful tool turned into a dangerous and unhealthy obsession.

“Over quarantine, my skin got really bad, and I realized I could use Photoshop. I’d touch up all my pictures, especially my skin,” Mia said. “I wouldn't post without the app, which was so toxic. Looking back at my pictures during that time, I see the pictures that I posted and I see how much I changed them from the originals. I feel bad for the younger me thinking that [my skin] was something that needed to be edited.”

Stuck at home during quarantine, Mia became engulfed in her social media feeds and her perception of beauty became “warped” by social media standards. She became “nitpicky” over small imperfections on her body and her mindset morphed into the mentality that “there’s always something to be fxed.”

“You start retouching one small [imperfection] and then you start to notice other details that no one else would have ever noticed; it becomes a downward spiral, like a loophole that’s hard to escape,” Mia said. “If all I saw was what was on my Instagram or TikTok feed, naturally I started to compare myself. Knowing people were looking a certain way on my feed, I felt the need to edit my own photos to match.”

According to anonymous senior Anika, the media often favors Eurocentric features—specifcally fair skin and lighter hair—that exclude features of other ethnicities. Instead of cherishing her natural Indian features, Anika faced a great deal of “insecurity,” around her fgure and her ethnic traits, as having “fairer skin and less body hair” is promoted by the media as the ideal appearance standard.

“Having those ideals pushed at you on social media can be harmful. You can easily get rid of your body hair by editing it out and you can easily lighten your skin tone. These flters and enhancements make it seem like body hair or dark skin is abnormal when you go on Instagram and see that no girl has them. It allows people to achieve that image more easily and further projects that you must meet that standard,” Anika said. “These flters, from a cultural perspective, are really harmful because you're forced to question your features: ‘Is it horrible?’ ‘Is it acceptable?’”

Small waists and light hair, fair-skinned women with sharp faces and clean-shaven legs: seeing characteristics unlike her own being popularized throughout the media compelled Anika to question her own worth and beauty.

“By taking in all of these other Instagram accounts, people from our school or random accounts, by comparing myself, that led me to a really difcult place of trying to grapple with with [the questions] ‘Am I beautiful?’

‘Am I worthy?’ ‘Am I pretty enough?’” Anika said. “It was just kind of a trickle-down effect. And beauty flters and all that enhancement done on people, really propel stereotypes and mindset in younger kids.”

The push for having Eurocentric features infuenced how both Mia and Anika perceived their bodies. Although beauty standards across the world difer, the media refects and wrongly indoctrinates a certain, at times unattainable, image of how a woman should look. Chasing these dominating idealistic standards, Mia says, becomes a “pursuit of perfection for the per fect body,” regardless of culture. Striving for a fawless face blinded her not only from valuing her own beauty but also from valuing the moment in her pictures.

“A smaller nose, smaller waist, longer hair and prettier eyes—it’s all a competition of who can try to be more perfect. This threw me of so much because I would see a picture of me with my friends laughing and the idea of someone being able to capture a picture of us having fun should have just been perfect the way it was. But I wasn’t able to see the beauty of the moment for what it was,” Mia said.

Seeing edited photos causes body-image awareness to sur face in athletes and people who workout, as well. Junior Kai Lucas, a wrestler, edits his photos in the gym to adjust lighting to better defne his muscles, however, he feels going any further would instill a sense of dishon esty towards how he perceives his and others’ bodies. As an athlete, wrestling infuencers food his social media feed, yet the problem is that their bodies don’t always mirror reali ty—and, according to Lucas, this warped reality leaves viewers vying for an unrealistic athletic, muscular body type.

“A lot of people, when they see unnatural infuencers that claim to be natural, get a false sense of hope that one day they can be just like them, but it actually causes them to go into states of dieting or overworking them selves to the point where they end up hurting themselves,” Lu cas said.

Though there’s a lot of in ternal and external pressure to maintain a muscular fgure, so cial media “motivates” Lucas to work harder.

“Now that I'm older, I focus on my own achievement instead of comparing my achievement to other people's. Other people's achievements tend to motivate me. When I see people on TikTok, especially guys my age or my weight, it motivates me to improve myself in a positive light,” Lucas said. When Photoshop was frst introduced in 1987, its original purpose was to help create digital graphics. Since then, it’s been adopted by thousands of people on social media. The countless features the software possesses, such as being able to manipulate colors and sizes and sharpen features have left people obsessing over the fawless, edited version of themselves. Its popularity has increased in the years, and in 2021, an astonishing 90% of women were reported to have edited their photos prior to posting, according to ScienceDaily, to present themselves as perfect as possible in the media.

With two years of experience, Mia is able to notice subtle edited faws in images and can tell small wiggles or warps in the photos. But, Mia started to realize the extent to which people get “absorbed” into photoshop, that “they don't realize the drastic changes they're making,” which for Mia, conjured some harsh feelings.

“I used to be judgmental of it, which was hypocritical of me, even when I was doing it at the same time. I would just be mad being like, ‘Oh, she photoshopped that, she's making people think she actually looks like that.’ But I realized I was angry at her for what she was doing because we both were victims of the same unrealistic beauty standards,” Mia said. “I was just channeling my anger at her, but it's not anyone's fault. It's just an idea of beauty that's been here and prevalent for so long. Everyone is going to fall victim to it at some point.”

For Anika, being pressured by beauty standards and feeling unhappy in her own body drove her to want to change her appearance by imitating social media trends, such as wearing “specifc shoes and clothing, or products”. She felt forced to shop at places for clothes she didn’t want to wear or attempt to ft into an unattainable, unhealthy body type before coming to terms with herself.

“When I'm on social media, I tell myself that I don't need to have everything that everybody else has. I just remind myself that I’m perfectly fne just the way I am. And that is a blessing,” Anika said.

While she does believe social media has been key to inviting all cultures and allowing for exposure to diferent ethnicities, she worries that flters continue to overlook diferent body types and facial characteristics, according to Anika, which she believes are all unique, beautiful and equal.

“Filters force this standard upon you that you have to look a certain way; it pushes this idea that you're just not what society wants,” Anika said. “Social media would be a more beautiful place if we celebrated everybody's perfections and imperfections without categorizing what is perfect and what is not.”

Despite the brimming levels of toxicity that result from editing, according to Mia, the process of editing minuscule details became exhausting and when her mom fnally removed the app from her phone, it allowed her to take a step back and become more accepting of herself.

“Now, instead of being resentful of what I saw, I can look at these pictures and be a little easier on myself. If you love a picture and want to post it, but there’s something holding you back, if it takes Photoshopping for you to just feel a little bit better, do it because it will make you happy,” Mia said. “But there will also come a time when you realize that you don't need it and that's a really important and beautiful lesson you can learn. You just have to go through it to come out on the other side.”

by Aidan Tseng

he 2022-2023 National Basketball Association (NBA) season has seen its highest scoring averages since 1970. Over 50 years ago in the 1970 NBA season, Kareem Abdul Jabbar was playing his frst NBA season and Jerry West—whose silhouette is used as the NBA logo—led the league in scoring in a 14-team league without a three-point line. Today, the NBA’s scoring infation promotes a game full of skill as opposed to physicality, which helps the league as a whole.

Points are being scored at a historic pace this year as teams, regardless of who is winning, are averaging 114.4 points per game according to Basketball Reference.

One of the reasons for this increase in scoring can be attributed to an overall increase in feld goals attempted. As of March 6, 2023, NBA teams are shooting the ball 88.1 times per game. 10 years ago, NBA teams shot the ball 82 times per game, and scored 98.1 points per game. Since teams are shooting the ball more times every game, naturally they will score more. Seeing more shots fy is good for television rating as it allows the NBA to display the accuracy and touch their best shooters possess.

But the NBA’s scoring infation lies deeper than just statistics. Some players believe that the game has strayed away from physicality on defense, as referees are calling more defensive fouls. As an eight-time all star and fourtime all-defensive team member, basketball player Paul George is known for his scoring and his elite defense. He recently said on a podcast when asked about defense in today's NBA: “It’s killing the game…We can’t defend as