This Horrible iOS App Edits Your Selfies To Make You Look Skinnier
Here’s a riddle for you: what do you call a beauty app that fixes one problem but creates another?
Give up? You call it SkinneePix, a $1 iOS app designed to automatically slim down your selfies by removing anywhere from “5 to 15 lbs” from your photos within a few seconds. The result, as the app’s co-founders would like you to believe, are portraits that many women feel more comfortable disseminating on Instagram or Facebook.
But SkinneePix isn’t just selling the idea of more shareable images. They’re selling insecurity.
Not like that’s entirely new. Popular media has long used Photoshop and editing tools to remove blemishes and tighten up bodies. Even Huawei’s latest phablet announced a built-in feature that would automatically slim down selfies taken on the device.
According to the SkinneePix co-founders, the app isn’t designed for people who are unhappy with their weight, but anyone who finds selfies to be unflattering.
"Cameras add additional weight to photos," co-founder of the Phoenix-based company Susan Green told Reuters. “And when you’re taking a selfie you’re also dealing with bad lighting, angles, close-ups and a lot of other factors that make people complain that the photo isn’t an accurate representation of themselves.”
Yes, selfies are rarely flattering unless you’re taking a photo of say, a bunch of Oscar-nominated actors and actresses. But there’s a difference between improving bad lighting/angles and promising instant weight loss.
SkinneePix is centered on one thing, and one thing only: being skinny. The name purposefully misspells the word to perhaps appeal to younger girls who might be looking to adjust their image according to what they’re told they should look like. And the actual tool that edits your selfies categorizes each edit by a specific amount of pounds shed.
As for the technology itself? Well, just like concept, it’s disappointingly shallow.
Here’s how it works:
You first take a selfie. Because this technology is sensitive to anything that might get in the way of it detecting your jaw line, it’s best for you to pull your hair back, and bring the camera far away from your face.
The app will analyze your face. Then you’re brought to a menu where you can preview what your mug will look like once it has shed a specific amount of weight. There are also two half-baked filters you have the option of applying.
Now watch, as I Matthew McConaughey myself.
5 pounds thinner: eh.
10 pounds thinner: weird?
15 pounds thinner: strangely disproportionate to the rest of my body.
As far as I can tell, SkinniePix is digital plastic surgery: it sucks in your jawline and calls it a day. That’s not a way to promote a healthy body image and, on a broader level, it sullies how we should approach sharing images on our own social networks.
One of the great things about selfies is they offer a spontaneous, natural shapshot of what you’re doing at any given moment. We shouldn’t succumb to Anna Wintour’s omnipresent judging gaze when it comes to our own personal newsfeed.
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