TIKTOK FILTERS & CHILDREN

i was scrolling on tiktok earlier (which i admittedly need to stop doing but thats not the point) and i accidentally opened the in-app camera. i was like oh ok im bad as fuck ill take a look real quick and i was like DAMN!!! but then i moved a little and something glitched so i was like huh?? and i looked down at the button and i saw that tiktok had an automatically placed filter

n that just had me sitting there like wtf. cuz when i took the filter off i had noticed it had slimmed down my jaw, smoothed my skin, made my nose smaller, etc.. and that just made me think about how awful it must be for young teenagers to open tiktok and see shit like that. i remember when i was like 12-13 and extremely insecure about myself, how i look, etc and that experience would have crushed me. feeling good about yourself and then having that ripped away when you realize it's a filter is an awful thing for a child to have to go through and society honestly actively pushes things like that to happen to kids.

cuz i mean why else would there be ads everywhere of young hot glass skinned sexy skinny white women and huge big buff pretty-faced men? why else would skinny & pretty be the norm? because people *make* it that way. health&beauty companies and honestly just companies in general make children feel like they NEED to look like a certain x and y standard for the world, that people won't like them or think they look weird because of it. so society says "hey! you look like total shit right now compared to this bullimic woman with makeup caked on her face whom is probably being forced to do this job. buy our products and use this filter to look just like her, just don't read the fine print about how it'll make you feel or what it'll do to your body!" and it's honestly disgusting because why is it so normalized to prey on young people like this.

it's not even just young people either. older people will spend thousands on shit like botox, anti-wrinkle supplements, creams, acids, ANYTHING to get them to look closer to the standard, and it's scary that these insecurities forced upon us by ourselves are so haunting that they follow people into their old age when they're supposed to be chilling in their beachside home with a kajillion dollars of retirement money spent to ease their comfort or something lol not go into the beauty industry.