In the land of beauty apps

Point phone camera at self, smile, click. Repeat, about 50 times. That’s what an hour looks like in the life of Ruchi Jadhav, a 20-year-old mass media student based in Mumbai. But that is just the beginning of the selfie process.

On average, it takes two weeks for Jadhav to upload a photo. Each post must be perfect. Even if it means altering her face. Rewind to two years ago. Jadhav had failed to gain admission into a medical college and was dealing with taunts and pressure at home. She found her escape in social media. She had a penchant for graphics, editing and make-up and decided to blend her interests into a beauty blog. To lay the foundation, she scrolled through the feeds of international beauty bloggers, who wore perfectly contoured noses, plump lips and sparkling eyes. She began to feel conscious of her own photos. A curvy teenager, her eyes were too small for her rounded face, her lips not striking enough. Her #browgame could be stronger. Everyone was talking about an angular jawline now. Learning about what beauty bloggers were doing with their photos became more than just research for her blog; it affected the way she saw herself in the mirror, or on her phone.

Jadhav began her own quest for the perfect selfie with a search for a white background to shoot against in Mumbai—to make her outfit and make-up pop, as in the style of bloggers from London. After a few hundred hours tinkering with editing apps, Jadhav had a great idea—use the teeth-whitening tool on a free photo-editing app called PicMonkey to wash out the backdrop. It worked.

What about the other features on PicMonkey, then? A swipe here and her skin was marble-smooth. Another and it glowed. Still another shielded a blemish. Oh, look, a slight pinch and her eyes grew more pronounced, staring boldly from her mildly airbrushed face. And the teeth were whitened, of course. Voilà. Post. The likes came clocking in.

Today, Jadhav has a folder on her iPhone dedicated to face-editing apps, numbering six (PicMonkey, AirBrush, Snapseed, VSCO, PicsArt and PhotoGrid) at last count. Each photo goes through all six apps. “Even if the photo is intended just for my personal Facebook account, I can’t post an unedited version anymore," she says. “In my head, everyone is looking at the photo to judge it. The blog has definitely unleashed my insecurities, and the apps work to address them."

There’s a process in place. First, the 50-odd photos taken as options, either with a tripod or by her 12-year-old brother, must be vetted. The chin is too prominent in this one. The hair is flying the wrong way in that. This one could work. It goes into a folder.

The selected options are narrowed down further. PicMonkey lets you slim parts of your body (and face); add a tint to your lips; and adjust the saturation and contrast, among other things. AirBrush can remove blemishes—Jadhav uses this especially for selfies. It can smoothen your skin, but also resize the photo such that you can lift your face to remove an unsightly double-chin or make your cheekbones more bulbous. You can inflate your lips à la Kylie Jenner and add a curve of eyeliner.

“I’m conscious of an arm tan," says Jadhav. “I choose the skin tone option, zoom in on my arms, adjust the size of the brush, choose a tone and click to make it even. It’s like magic."

If she is wearing a maxi dress or palazzo pants and wants to look taller, a simple tool on the AirBrush app helps her vertically stretch a part of her body, making her appear longer. This serves a dual purpose, she explains. “It makes the clothes look better on me and it could also inspire followers with my body type to experiment. They should know that they can also wear palazzo pants, for instance."

Next, Snapseed. Add a flare of sunlight for a spunky daylight picture. Or a stylized bokeh effect for a glamorous night shot. The background is as important as the foreground; all elements of the image must tie in together to bring the focus on the desired object. Everything in the photo has to be micromanaged—the colour of a lipstick, the metallic tint of an earring, the soft pink of that brunch dress.

Jadhav tests all the beauty apps on the shortlisted images, and finally, the one shot that appears most natural makes the cut. To finish off, VSCO lets you adjust the lighting and post to your VSCO feed, which can mirror your Instagram feed.

“It’s important that the colours and photos all work together in the Instagram grid," she explains.

The end is often remarkably different from the original photo. Jadhav’s face is differently shaped in some photos, with an altered skin tone in others. “Friends sometimes leave comments saying this doesn’t look like me, but that doesn’t bother me," she says. “It’s what I aspire to be, and if I can have that in a photo, I don’t think there’s anything wrong. My followers (she has 18,000 followers on Instagram) seem to agree."

This isn’t just the story of Ruchi Jadhav, of course, but that of a generation that has a new avenue to address their insecurities—tools that were earlier only available in permanent offline forms.

“It’s sort of like digital plastic surgery," says Bishakha Datta, a writer and documentary film-maker. She is the founder of Point of View, a non-profit that works to bring women’s opinions into community and public domains via media, art and culture. “But it is also, like most things online, considered partly like play."

The difference between using an app such as Prisma, which lets you convert your photos into the styles of famous artists, and face-editing apps, is that Prisma doesn’t play on your insecurities, she adds. “This, however, is just a symptom that has moved into the digital space. The deeper problem is of body-shaming, online and offline, of judging women by the shape of their nose or lips or waistline; it’s a new technology, but reflects the same anxieties."

For many women who have grown in the digital age, the gap between reality and the virtual image is blurring. Reality, Datta says, is no longer just about the physical form; for young people, reality can be the image they project in the digital world. Jadhav’s reality could well be not the face she looks at in the mirror, but the one she sees on her Instagram feed.

“With the balance between representation and reality changing, how can we expect people to not put up the best versions of themselves?" Datta asks. “This only extends the problem to a whole other realm. What takes place offline, with the beauty industry building on your insecurities with products for each mark, propagating an idea of perfection, projecting an image of women that is acceptable to society, is now going digital. As with the beauty industry, the user is not to blame. What the industries define as the problem is the problem."

Jadhav agrees. “Many people, including my dad, constantly tell me about natural beauty. I know I am beautiful, but make-up enhances that beauty, and these apps perfect it," she says. “And when the ‘likes’ climb the charts, it makes me believe in myself. That even though my life isn’t perfect, at least my photographs can be."

Makeover

Everything you can change about your look using apps such as AirBrush, PicMonkey, BeautyPlus, Facetune, Perfect365 and LINE Camera

Forehead

Remove acne, smoothen skin, stretch it slightly to make it appear larger.

Eyebrows

Fill them in, make them darker.

Eyes

Edit eye colour, add “make-up" (choose whether you want the eyeliner smokey or subtle), make the eyes larger. Remove dark circles or wrinkles from underneath.

Lips

Make them fuller, longer, shaped at the ends. Use the “satin" or “stain" tools to add a tint of your choice.

Body

Stretch a part of your body, either your waist or legs, to appear taller while still keeping your body proportionate.

Teeth

Whiten, brighten.

Nose

Slim, contour, make it sharper.

Cheekbones

Reshape to make them more pronounced, add a touch of blush to make them stand out against your outfit, smoothen, raise or lift, remove blemishes

Chin

Resize to remove unsightly double chin; reshape to make the jawline angular or to keep up with modern trends

Waist

Slim it. Shape it. There are apps specifically for making you look thinner, such as the unimaginatively named Make Me Thin.