The natural world, as it is, is such an inconvenience of hideous deformities. Trees grow all akimbo, cloud shapes are embarrassing, rivers flow all wobblylike, humans are riddled with features. It is our duty to the blemished Earth to eliminate all of these flaws, as systematically as possible. It is only fair to start with our own, terrible, inadequate faces.
Writing at Medium, Chris Stokel-Walker notes that photo-improving software is preloaded as a default in some smartphones. In new Samsung phones, the “Beauty Face” is a default setting for users, automatically smoothing the texture of faces. Samsung’s promotional video adds that its software has weight-loss and feelings-improving power to boot: “A really cool feature is that it will actually make your face a little bit narrower, so you get a little skinnier. With the Beauty Face mode, you become a little more beautiful.” Thinner, imperfection-free, just more beautiful: It’s the least our faces could do for the world around them.
