We have a very interesting relationship with beauty filters. The idea of them falls into the category of ‘ love to hate’ in one camp and ‘won’t film without” in the other. The reason we love them is simple, they exploit and magnify our visual preferences. Filters amplify many of the things we see as attractive, smoother skin, clearer complexion, facial symmetry, bigger /brighter eyes, fuller lips, stronger contrast around the eyes and mouth.
Visual contrast has a strong impact. The cleaner the contrast, the more noticeable the visual cues. Filters often brighten the eyes, darken lashes, define brows, sharpen lips, and smooth surrounding skin. That nothing new, people have been using makeup to do that in real life for years. The difference is these filters are automating and exaggerating it.
Stacked on top of that is the halo effect, a tendency to associate attractive faces with other positive traits, like health, intelligence, confidence, happiness, and sociability. Theres a really interesting relationship between these two. On one hand , exaggerated beauty becoming the new norm on the other the assumption that this beauty correlates directly to aspirational characteristics.
Recent studies are exploring the preference we have for filtered faces and the idea that they are ‘more attractive’ than their unfiltered versions.
So yeah there is a reason we like filters.
Here are a couple links to some of the articles I found while researching.
What is beautiful is still good: the attractiveness halo effect in the era of beauty filters
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39606589/
National Library of Medicine - Facial attractiveness: evolutionary-based research
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3130383/?utm_source=chatgpt.com#s2
