23 Times Famous People Spoke Out Against Filters And The Unattainable Beauty Standards They Create
On the surface level, beauty filters and Photoshop may seem like harmless fun or quick confidence boosts. However, according to the Harvard Business Review, "Studies have shown that virtually modifying appearance can provoke anxiety, body dysmorphia, and sometimes even motivate people to seek cosmetic surgery."
Social media can tempt us to compare the natural, unfiltered faces we see in the mirror to the photoshopped or filtered pictures that we see on our feeds. This has led a lot of people, in Hollywood and beyond, to denounce the use of filters or encourage a more realistic approach to them.
Here are 23 celebs who spoke out against beauty filters:
1.After testing a bunch of popular Snapchat filters that all changed her brown eyes to blue, Selena Gomez said, "Literally every single Snapchat filter has blue eyes. But…what if you have brown eyes? ... Am I supposed to have these eyes to, like, look good?"
She also noticed that, while the beauty filters changed her eye color, the distorted ones left them brown.
She said, "I think I'll just stick to the 'gram. Brown eyes are beautiful, everyone."
2.During one of her Las Vegas residency shows, Adele spoke to an audience member, model/nutritionist Jamy G, who took a video using a beauty filter. After overcoming her initial shock at the filter, Adele told her, "Why are you doing filters like that? We don't look like that, darling." Fans praised the singer for how she handled it.
Sharing the clip on Instagram, Jamy captioned it, "What a beautiful moment shared between Adele and I. She called me out, and I was here for it. Lol literally speechless!"
3.Bethenny Frankel told Oprah Daily, "No. I have never filtered [my Instagram pictures]. ... It’s desperate, it’s destructive, and it’s rampant. ... Certain celebs say, 'I look this way because I don't drink and I sleep a lot.' People are lying. See a celebrity or a [Real] Housewife in person versus their social media, and [the difference] is staggering."
She continued, "The super subtle tweak where someone looks really natural is more annoying. You're thinking, 'Wait a second — she has no makeup on, and she looks perfect. Ugh, why don’t I look like that?' ... [Filtered images are] not the influence I want on my child or on other children. We have to unfollow — the wrong people are the biggest influencers in this country."
4.In an Instagram video, Demi Lovato called out the "unrealistic beauty expectations" that a beauty filter gave them by pointing out all the changes it made to their face, such as changing their eye color and making their nose smaller. They said, "Thank God I'm realizing this now, and I'm sorry for using them without realizing how dangerous they were before."
She also said, "Thank God these weren't around when I was 13, but also...how are teens supposed to learn to accept themselves with this shit?"
5.After fans told Florence Pugh that a picture she'd posted on her Instagram story had a filter, she explained that her phone "corrected" her face automatically. In a follow-up story post, she said, "It was really fucked up that my phone automatically decided to make me the way that it wanted me to look."
She continued, "I think filters are a really cool thing to have, and I'm completely aware that people don't necessarily want their 'imperfections' and 'flaws' out there. and that's totally fine — I myself have even been known to use a few filters. But that should be your choice, and that should be your decision. And this phone here should not automatically decipher what it's been programmed to believe is beautiful. ... And I read a couple of messages, and some of you were saying that even your freckles have been blurred out. And that's really sad, and it is scary. And I think in a world where we see so much on our phones and we know that so much of it isn't really — it's really alarming that it does it automatically. ... Be aware that this is only adding to this circle of insecurity, and I hope that talking about it helps."
6.Testing out a beauty filter on her Instagram Story, Lizzo candidly told fans, "These filters freak me out! If you're watching this, I want you to know you got that no-filter beauty. The beauty that these filters give you is a nice thing — it's cute, but if your skin don't look like this, if your nose don't look like this, if your lips don't look like this, if your eyes don't look like this — that's okay..." She ended the video by showing her face without the filter.
7.Lizzo participated in a TikTok trend where, set to "Humble" by Kendrick Lamar, users showed themselves with and without makeup and filters to promote body positivity.
8.While filming Everything Everywhere All at Once, Jamie Lee Curtis requested that no filters or other alterations be used for her character. On Instagram, she said, "In the world, there is an industry — a billion-dollar, trillion-dollar industry — about hiding things. Concealers. Body-shapers. Fillers. Procedures. Clothing. Hair accessories. Hair products. Everything to conceal the reality of who we are. And my instruction to everybody was: I want there to be no concealing of anything."
She continued, "I've been sucking my stomach in since I was 11, when you start being conscious of boys and bodies, and the jeans are super tight. I very specifically decided to relinquish and release every muscle I had that I used to clench to hide the reality. That was my goal. I have never felt more free creatively and physically."
9.In honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, Garcelle Beauvais shared an unretouched Instagram selfie and captioned it with this important reminder: "I hope you remember you're beautiful just as you are, no filter or makeup needed."
She added, "You shine just fine."
10.On Red Table Talk, model Paulina Porizkova said, "I make a point of not using filters [on Instagram] ever because that's kind of my thing. ... I am so delighted when I see a woman my age that looks like I do. ... And I find it beautiful on them, so I'm kind of hoping to do for other women what some of those women do for me."
She also said, "The amount of, like, 'Hey, grandma' that I get...it hurts my ego a little bit. But, at the same time, isn't that part of the beauty of becoming older? That we acquire more confidence because we know who we are. And we're a little easier with just telling people to piss off."
11.During a fan Q-and-A for a SiriusXM Hits 1 Town Hall Special, Taylor Swift was asked what she'd tell kids growing up in today's world. She replied, "I think kids now are facing such harder circumstances. The fact that the isolation and that rejection hits in real time. ... It's harder than what I had to go through, so hang in there, I have no idea how you're doing it. Also, you don't need to look like a filter. You're great."
12.Actor Mitaali Nag told Urban Asian, "Using filters to make your skin or body change to an unbelievable extent is definitely wrong, and it gradually develops an inferiority complex. ... I keep a check on what kind of work is done on my pictures or videos before posting them, and [I] make sure that nothing looks artificial in them. I make sure that my social media reflects the real me by posting pictures and videos in a raw or no makeup look mostly."
She continued, "I feel anything done in limit does no harm. So, if once in a while I use a filter on my picture or post a professionally shot picture which has been photoshopped on my profile, I don't feel I am setting a bad example, because I make sure to balance it with posting more of my raw and real self."
13.Emilia Jones told Elle, "'For better or worse, Gen Z's approach to beauty is so dictated by social media — it's so present. I think it's not a good thing that teenagers are looking on Instagram and seeing all these filtered and airbrushed images that aren't real."
14.In honor of her 47th birthday, Tracee Ellis Ross shared a series of unfiltered pictures of herself on Instagram and celebrated the aging process. She wrote, "I LOVE getting older, and I LOVE my life. ... I've worked so hard to feel good in my skin and to build a life that truly matches me, and I'm in it, and it feels good."
She continued, "I remain curious and teachable and so it will all keep getting better. No filter, no retouch 47-year-old thirst trap! Boom!"
15.Sharing a no-makeup and no-filter video on Instagram for the #UnfilteredChallenge, Tia Mowry captioned her post, "We all know the feeling. That pressure for us to always be perfect. You know what I'm talking about, the societal pressure for us to act, look, speak the right way… the list goes on. I'm here to tell you that you should always be authentic, be real, and be unapologetically YOU."
"Whatever that feels and looks like to you," she concluded.
16.Discussing her role in Mare of Easttown, Kate Winslet told the New York Times, "I hope that in playing Mare as a middle-aged woman...I guess that's why people have connected with this character in the way that they have done, because there are clearly no filters. She's a fully functioning, flawed woman with a body and a face that moves in a way that is synonymous with her age and her life and where she comes from. I think we’re starved of that a bit."
She also refused to let production edit her body in an intimate scene or retouch her face in the promotional poster.
17.On her Instagram stories, actor/model/Love Island contestant Ekinsu Cülcüloğlu said, "I've decided I'm not going to be using filters anymore — no. I think it's a bad example for all the women out there and young girls. So, no more filter."
18.Testing out a beauty filter in an Instagram video, Jennifer Love Hewitt shared her honest reaction, saying, "I do not look like this. I wish I did. But I don't. But I wish I did. But I don't."
19.In an Instagram video for Linda Ikeji's Blog, actor Chacha Eke Faani explained that she stopped editing and filtering her pictures because she was tired of living a "lie." She said, "Social media has brought about this level of scam, and I don't want to participate in it."
20.Influencer/author Chessie King Carter stopped using filters on Instagram because she realized she was "getting real social anxiety that [she'd] bump into a follower, and they would think [she didn't] look as good as [she does] in the pictures [she puts] online."
She told the Sun, "I started posting the best images of me — ones that would make the cut for Instagram — but also posting ones that didn't 'make the cut' alongside it. I couldn’t believe how many girls said I was 'brave' for doing it. ... That made me realize there was a real need to show this."
21.Showing an example of an extremely face-altering beauty filter on Instagram, Jameela Jamil said, "Celebrities who use these feature transforming filters…suck. You're contributing to the same shit that fucked you up. Stop the cycle. I beg of you. No likes are worth what we are doing to the kids."
She continued, "It also sets YOU up for emotional damage when you have to then reckon with your own actual face IRL. Nobody wins but the patriarchy when we do this."
22.After taking a month-long break from Instagram in January, actor Madeleine West embraced "filter-free-Feb" upon her return to the platform. In a blog post for 9Honey, she wrote, "Terrifying as it is to face the cyber world without the cushioning effect of a few tweaks, unfiltering my Instagram has revealed just how many veils and disguises we dress the real world up in order to survive it."
She continued, "This is human nature, but the reality is that by living in a comfortably numb, blinkered state, there are myriad incredible things we miss along the way."
23.And finally, sharing a makeup-and-filter-free selfie on Instagram, Tyra Banks captioned her post, "You know how people say #nofilter but you know there's a freakin' filter on their pic? Or maybe there's a smidge of retouching going on but they're lying and saying it's all raw & real? Well, this morn, I decided to give you a taste of the really real me. I wanted to smooth out my dark circles so badly!!! But I was like, 'Naw, Ty. Show 'em the REAL you.' So...here I am. Raw. And there YOU are...looking at me, studying this picture."
She continued, "Maybe you're thinking, 'Whoa, she looks ROUGH.' And if you are, great! You deserve to see the REAL me. The REALLY real me."
