Beauty Standards and Their Influence in Technology

Beauty Standards and Their Influence in Technology

I’ve always been fascinated with developments in technology. Our founding members have a deep interest in artificial intelligence and often speak highly of it. They have shown me how it can be used to create art, including anonymized image and video representations of ourselves.

I had a fun time creating my own AI avatar and generating a slightly different version of myself from my photos. It has my main features, but I also realized that it’s idealized. Although it isn’t idealized in a very harmful way, upon looking at it you can see that there are some male-gaze beauty standards present. The skin is made to be extremely smooth and not porous, and the hair looks salon treated. There are some dark circles on my eyes, but it looks like makeup was used to smooth most of my face.

Clearly, there is some male-influence in this technology! The way my AI avatar was presented is the idealized way that males would want to view me. Unfortunately, many women have also desired these types of looks due to fear of judgment or being ugly. I’ve spent way too many hours at the salon or applying makeup in the past. Admittedly, I still use some makeup today, but I am trying to cut it down.

I should have of course expected AI images to be a bit idealized. What I pondered though is if through some editing, we could make healthier representations of ourselves.

I decided to try to redo my AI look. This time, I included some acne. I know that acne isn’t desirable to many, but it’s a part of my face and many women’s, and we shouldn’t have to cover it up. Women often try to get rid of the dark spots on their eyes, so this time I purposefully let it show. Forget about the salon, and forget brushing, we’re going to university with messy hair! I also cut the length of the hair down. Since we don’t want any men’s attention anymore, let’s keep it short and easy to clean.

Was I happy with the result? Yes, and no. My conditioned mind says no because I still can’t imagine being in public or going to class like this! However, I say yes because that’s closer to how I wake up as. I woke up like this, I woke up like this! We do so much work, we do so much labor on ourselves that we end up looking like different people! I don’t want to spend $300 at the salon anymore trying to achieve a magazine look, and I hope for my colleagues to stop too!

I understand that male beauty standards appearing in AI won’t lead to violence or death against us. Even so, I do think that it is important to realize the bias in technology we use. I had to add many details to the prompt in order to get it to be more realistic. We should also ask ourselves: should we want our ideal look to be the one where we need many products and treatments to achieve? Men just wake up, and they go right to work or class. These men don’t spend their weekends at the salon or nail parlors, spending countless hundreds of dollars and multiple hours on their hair. If there’s one thing we can learn from men then that’s a lesson right there.

Some brave women are even refusing to shave. I don’t know if I’m ready! Just know that I always appreciate what they do. Many of my friends still look at things like armpit hair in disgust. I have been conditioned to think the same, but I try to open my mind more to the women who are rejecting beauty standards. I don’t always know what to feel about everything, but I know that we are currently expected to do far too much!

The more I look at my new avatar, the more I like it. What if women on TV, movies, and advertisements, could show all their acne and pores? It somehow seems to be more human, not artificial. Beauty lies not in expensive treatments or products, it’s simply who we are. ♀