Filtered Beauty
Leehe Bok
We live in a world where it is unlikely to really ever know what most people look like beneath the face they put on in the morning. Humans don’t just filter their physicality. Almost anyone who uses social media curates their digital persona to represent the best version of themselves. This project doesn’t impose judgments, but instead proposes the question, where is the line drawn between ourselves and Filtered Beauty?
This book explores the notion of how we alter our realities on a daily basis in both small and large ways, focusing on the role in which the cosmetics and beauty industry plays in the face fashioning of contemporary culture. The reader experiences how applying a full face of makeup relates to our own defined self-identity. They do this through a visual interpretation of images that embody a few of the most predominant trends in beauty culture. By viewing and experiencing the different sections that intertwine with a material exploration of physically filtering photos enhancing the extremes of these four trends — Object, Color, Glossy, and Glitter — providing the opportunity for the reader to consider their position on the effects applying makeup has on how they perceive their own reality. By doing so, the reader potentially deepens their understanding of how one might feel about the influence of beauty standards to their own self-perception.