Generally, on social media, filters smooth skin texture, plump lips, lift cheekbones, and give the illusion of a hyaluronic acid injection. It's a kind of virtual surgery that replicates beauty standards onto faces. While regularly criticized in discussions about self-acceptance, some internet users believe that filters have a benevolent purpose, using the aging option to better envision themselves at different ages.
The aging filter, repurposed as an acceptance technique
Boycotted and considered almost unfathomable visual scams, beauty filters accustom our eyes to this idea of perfection and reinforce aesthetic standards. Once used for fun, filters are no longer mediocre caricatures, but essential parameters for "optimizing" a selfie or correcting a portrait deemed unflattering in its original version.
They embody an ideal of beauty on screen. They alter facial features, stretch the skin like a facelift, refine eyebrows, mimic the effect of Botox on the lips, and create tailor-made faces directly inspired by beauty standards. These filters are cosmetic surgery at your fingertips. It's black magic 2.0. However, while most filters focus on smoothing and sculpting the face of their users, there's also one that simulates how we'll look several years from now.
This filter, which has already been applied to our photos, paints our hair gray , draws wrinkles across our face, and gives us signs of middle age. Mostly used out of curiosity or to elicit a few laughs, this filter mentally prepares us for what we'll look like in 40 years. And some content creators, like @josiehadac, use it to reassure themselves and better cope with the physical changes of aging . In a post where she shows what her 2078 self will look like, she writes in the center, "Beauty doesn't fade, only youth disappears." A very wise maxim that seems straight out of a book on self-confidence. According to her, this often-criticized technology can boost self-esteem and help us become familiar with our future selves, in the twilight of life.
@josiehadac Thinking of growing old used to be detrimental to me and now it's like. Cool I'll be closer to Heaven ♬ Knockin' on Heaven's Door - Bob Dylan
The obsessive fear of passing time
In a society obsessed with fighting aging, where skincare increasingly resembles science fiction, it's difficult to embrace growing older with serenity. Today, young people have barely finished puberty before they want to return to it and anticipate what many call "the ravages of time." They want to freeze time on their skin and defy the laws of nature with firming creams, cutting-edge treatments that promise aesthetic immortality, and injections inspired by the greatest dystopian visions of pop culture.
The figures speak for themselves: young people aged 18 to 34 now resort to cosmetic surgery more than those over 50. If they could freeze their figures or change their bodies at fifty to stay looking brand new, they would.
The aging filter, on the other hand, offers a more concrete glimpse of age, allowing users to approach it not with fatalism but with a philosophical outlook. Instead of fleeing reality, it confronts it. On social media, influencers have all braved their anxieties by using this modern strategy. Some consider themselves "luckier" than others, sporting only a few fine lines, while others discover with astonishment the genetic predisposition of their parents. Those in their twenties, raised on digitally altered images since adolescence, display a sense of despair at the sight of this result, which falls far short of societal expectations.
@valeria.lipovetsky #stitch with @natalia this filter has favorites you cant tell me otherwise#aging #aged ♬ original sound - valerialipovetsky
Does this filter accurately reflect the future of the face?
To test the accuracy of this aging filter, touted as the most reliable and sophisticated ever created for TikTok, savvy internet users applied it to celebrities at the dawn of their careers. They then compared it to the stars' current appearances, and it's clear that the result is remarkably realistic. The result is true to life.
"There's something very credible about this filter. You can really see the fat loss, the temple hollowing out, the nasolabial folds deepening," dermatologist Marie Jourdan told the newspaper Le Parisien . According to her expert eye, this filter is quite convincing. It's not a fabrication. "We are not all equal when it comes to aging," the specialist reminds us, emphasizing ethnic, genetic, and dermatological factors.
This AI-enhanced aging filter trains our perceptions of a face that society constantly demonizes, simultaneously resetting our mindset. Because, after all, despite bioactive serums and skincare products resurrected from the film "The Substance," it's impossible to control one's reflection. And even less so to fight against the natural course of life.
