Social Appearance Anxiety in the Age of Filters
MA Reflective Journal—Yuhan Zhu
After the event, Zhang Hui and Charles are willing to show part of their selfie photos on my blog. I know it takes a lot of courage for them and I am very grateful for their support for my intervention.
(Figure From Charles)
(Figure From Zhang Hui)
In the past week, I set a new Intervention rule for Lily based on her situation. In the feedback of the last Intervention, I knew that she would feel anxious in the process of taking pictures with her native camera, so I will chat with her in the process to encourage her and help her divert attention from her facial features. But to try to accept what you really are and maintain a state of self-confidence. I have made changes in two main areas. The first is that I will make phone calls with her every day. During this process, I will encourage her to use my filter taking selfies, and then listen to her feelings. I hope she is in a relaxed state during this process. The second is that I reduced the activity cycle to one week because I don’t want her to be stressed. Although the duration is reduced, I will communicate with her for at least 30 minutes every day. After I told Lily about this proposal, she agreed. Although she still has some doubts about the effect of this event, she is happy to talk to me about her feelings because she doesn’t know who can talk about it except me.
On the first day of the chat, Lily was a little cautious. I first started talking to her about my own feelings of social appearance anxiety and the reason why I wanted to do this topic. I hope my story can give her some confidence because I have also struggled with self-doubt and social appearance anxiety. Although I no longer fall into this mood most of the time now, it still happens sometimes. Lily said that she was surprised that I would feel this way because she always sees me confidently. She asked me how this feeling is different from before. My answer is like you have a protective suit, but this power comes from your heart and not from other things. I think that people using beauty cameras are like people seeking this kind of protective clothing from the outside, but this is just an illusion.
After I said my feelings, Lily began to open her heart and communicate with me gradually. Lily told me that at first she just used filters to adjust the brightness of the images so that her skin would look more delicate. But with the App’s update, the beauty Camera has added new functions that can change the size of people’s facial features. During that time, it was very popular on social media to share different tips to use beauty cameras to make people’s facial features more refined. And Lily also start to use a beauty camera from time and she said she would use different parameters in different situations to change the size of her features. Sometimes the eyes are bigger, sometimes the nose is smaller.
During the chat, I encouraged Lily to use my filter to take selfies. I asked her to try to observe her face carefully and don’t apply any template to her face. And after she took a selfie, Lily said she didn’t want to share these photos with me, but she was willing to try to accept herself in these photos. I asked Lily what do you think of the photo? Lily said she didn’t have the courage to look at the photo. She described this feeling as if she had handed in annoying homework and didn’t want to check it.
We talked for an hour and Lily said she liked this kind of chat. I am not sure whether this Intervention can achieve the results I expected, but I think I have not been refused to continue the call, which is a good start.
In today’s call, Lily told me that she has been thinking about the standard of beauty since the last chat. She said that she didn’t care who set this standard, and she was wondering whether she had applied this standard to her face. She said that in the last selfie, I encouraged her to observe her face carefully, which is very difficult for her because she always imagined her face as another appearance, the one she imagined. Lily said that this discovery made her feel that her brain would automatically turn into a beauty camera to beautify her appearance when she took pictures. She thinks this is the reason why she can’t accept herself in the native camera. (I think this description is very interesting.)
I told her that I was very happy that she was thinking about it. It was an interesting observation. I shared with her the book from Émile Coué, “The Power Of Positive Autosuggestion”, which is also from my literature review. I told her that long-term positive psychological cues will subtly change her brain’s thinking, thereby changing her behavior.
I encourage her to keep hinting to her brain during the process of taking pictures, “Go and accept who you are.” Although I didn’t see the photo, Lily told me that she didn’t want to look at the screen before. During today’s selfie, Lily took her favorite pose and took the photo while looking at the camera. She feels that today’s experience is a challenge for her.
I’m so excited about this!
At the beginning of today’s chat, Lily told me that she would often feel that people on the road were observing her. This feeling made her very uncomfortable and lacking self-confidence. I asked her when does this usually happens? She said the feeling is usually very strong when she is without makeup. I am full of curiosity about this answer because I was just thinking that the beauty camera aggravates people’s social appearance anxiety, whether makeup is also a factor?
I asked Lily which has more influence on her, the beauty camera or the makeup? Lily told me that it is difficult to distinguish. In terms of her feelings, the beauty camera is more displayed on the Internet, such as to friends who have not met for a long time or netizens who have never met. But makeup is to show a better state in real life. Lily told me that this is like a matryoshka doll. Under the beauty camera, she will feel that she does not look good with makeup and feel anxious. But with makeup, she will feel that she is not good-looking without makeup. In short, she just can’t accept who she is.
Lily was too busy to read the book I recommended. So in the process of taking pictures today, I chose some clips to read to her to encourage her. She told me that she didn’t resist this process anymore, but it was definitely not enjoyable.
I think today’s call is very meaningful to me because I have discovered that makeup may also be a factor in causing facial anxiety. And I also enjoy talking to Lily because she always has a lot of interesting metaphors
Lily and I did not talk a lot today because she has a lot of work to deal with. She hoped that I could continue to read the content of the book to her while taking pictures, which was like a positive psychological suggestion to her.
She told me that she always cares about how others think of her looks. I also assigned her a small task to write down five reasons why she cares about others’ opinions about her appearance. I hope that in the next chat I can have an in-depth chat about these five questions.
1: I think my appearance will affect whether I am popular in the group.
2: I enjoy being watched
3: I think a good-looking appearance can make life easier, and everyone will be more tolerant of me.
Lily only gave me these three answers. Why are these answers all about other people’s opinions and feelings instead of Lily’s own? I am very confused about these answers. I asked Lily what about her feelings? Lily did not know how to answer, she said she had never thought about this question.
We continued today’s selfie and I encouraged her to think about word self-esteem and self-confidence, to pay attention to her own feelings instead of other people’s.
Lily told me today that she had never thought about self-esteem before. She only knows that if she wants to be more popular in the group, she must become more beautiful. Then she heard someone say that becoming more confident will make people more beautiful. This is the reason that why she is willing to participate in my activities. This is no doubt that I hope everyone who participates in my Intervention can become more confident and no longer be troubled by social appearance anxiety. But the problem is self-confidence is something you feel inside.
However, in these days of chatting, from Lily’s feelings, she hopes that the confidence she can learn from my activities is more like a skill. This skill is just like the beauty camera or makeup I talked about before. It is another way to make Lily more beautiful, rather than self-confidence or self-esteem.
In today’s selfie, I shared these views with Lily. I encouraged her to rethink the meaning of this event, to think about the relationship between this event and self-confidence and self-esteem.
Today is the last chat, I feel very nervous because I don’t know how Lily will think about the question I left in the last chat.
Lily told me that in this society, many ideas have been formed before she realized it. In the past, she was thinking about how to try to cater to these ideas. It feels like students have to remember every knowledge point in the face of an exam. She said she checked the definition of self-esteem and self-confidence. “Self-esteem refers to whether you appreciate and value yourself. Your self-esteem develops and changes as a result of your life experiences and interactions with other people. Self-confidence is your belief in yourself and your abilities.” Lily said she couldn’t answer whether my Intervention was effective for her because she did not become confident at the end of the event. This is because her understanding of the concept of “confidence” is different from mine and I was trying to teach her something she hadn’t thought about. But knowing the definition of self-confidence and self-esteem is important to her, Lily told me.
We ended our last selfie.
Now four guests have completed the two-week filter event and I have received all their feedback and questionnaires. At the same time, unfortunately, a guest decided to quit form my event. ( I will post the pictures of questionnaires below)
Both of them responded positively to the answers to the three questions, and both believed that my activities were effective and helpful to them. In addtion, they are also willing to share the experience of this event with their friends and family. Three people said they would still use this filter after the event. However, a guest called charles replied that he would not use this filter again. When I asked him the reason, he told me that the filter was a tool for him. But he wanted to be able to truly accept himself without resorting to external forces. I am very proud of this and I told him I will always support him if he needs.
When I encourage them to give me more feedback and suggestions. They all felt that the previous interviews helped them to think and feel better in this session, which paved the way for the filter event. In other words, the previous interview session allowed them to face the problem of social appearance anxiety and try to solve it instead of indulging in anxiety. One of the guests told me that she felt that being able to talk about this problem boldly was an important factor for her to solve it.
On the contrary, another guest called Lily told me that she did not want to participate further after the third day of participation in the event. She feels that taking pictures with this filter every day will give her a sense of pressure, and she still can’t fully accept herself under the original camera. Lily told me that every time she saw herself in the native camera, she became less confident. She feels that the beauty camera is not bad, and when she sees herself in the beauty camera, she feels more confident. I asked Lily if my slogan on the filter encouraged her, such as You Are Pretty And Confident. Lily replied that she felt encouraged when she first saw it, but when she started to observe her face, she Will forget those slogans. She will start to check her face very clearly and feel dissatisfied, such as a collapsed nose. Then she will fall into negative emotions. I understand Lily’s feelings because I have been struggling like this for a while. I told Lily that although she could not continue to participate in the event, I hope to keep in touch with her so that I can continue to help her when I have the opportunity.
In the tutorial last week, I told my mentor Cai about this situation. She suggested that if I have time, I can develop a new Intervention for Lily alone because I have had similar feelings before. I think this is a good suggestion because the filter is a static thing, so Lily is easily distracted when taking pictures. She will gradually shift her attention to her face instead of maintaining a confident state. If I can distract her, don’t let her keep observing her face, but feel the process of being encouraged. I think this will give Lily a better experience. I will try to communicate this with Lily.
Before that, I will share with Lily the positive experience of the other guests. (I got permission from other guests) I hope these will give Lily the courage and confidence to make changes. Lily has not participated in my interview activities before. Therefore I think the previous interview activities are very effective. It takes a while to accept an idea. I hope I can accompany Lily to have a new experience. I am very happy about this because I always felt that the interview activity took me a lot of time in unit 2, but in the Unit 3 study, I completely changed my direction. I think the interview is not enough as an intervention because it is just a communication process. I hope to let my guests feel and accept themselves spontaneously, from the activities I designed. Through this feedback, I found that the interview was useful. It was like a transition, allowing my guests to have a better acceptance of the filter event.
In order to effectively collect participants’ activity feedback, I created a questionnaire to collect participants’ feelings. I will send this form to my guests on the third day, the seventh day, and the fourteenth day respectively, to collect their feedback on my Intervention in time.
Below is my questionnaire template.
Before the event started, I always worried that the 14-day cycle would be difficult for the guests to stick to. But so far, I have received photos from Zhang Hui and Charles for ten days.
Especially Charles, he is the only male in my event. He sends me photos every day and shares his feelings with me. Charles told me that as a male it is difficult to express that he is anxious about his appearance. He said that he rarely took selfies before because it was something girls would do. And he gradually observed himself under the lens since he needed to use my filter to take selfies every day. When I asked him whether the filter reduces his social appearance anxiety? He said YESSSS! Charles came to the United States since middle school, but with an oriental face, he couldn’t integrate well into the school environment. Charles told me that when he couldn’t deal with this feeling of isolation, he could only attribute the cause of these problems to his Eastern appearance. And the filter is like a mirror, allowing him to reflect himself. At the end of the chat, Charles told me during this process, he find that there is nothing wrong with his face. He realized that the anxiety about his own appearance is an escape behavior.
Last time I mentioned that I hope to invite some prestigious people to join my event to get more attention. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any response. I tried to contact some well-known magazine editors and Internet celebrity agents, but I didn’t get any reply. This reminds me that in my feedback from Unit 2, Richard told me that if in my opinion, social media has established a standard of beauty to promote people’s appearance anxiety, then there is a contradictory relationship between them. This may be the reason why my invitation did not get any response. But this made me realize that there is no space for people with social appearance anxiety to talk about their feelings. What’s more serious is that things that cause people to suffer from social appearance anxiety will not attract influential people to discuss it because there is a contradictory relationship between them. From most of the feedback I have received so far, the reason why these guests join my intervention is that they feel they can bravely talk about their appearance and anxiety during the event, which makes them feel relaxed.
After the last Tutor, I decided to use text design on the filter to encourage participants. I designed two different filters and provided these photos to my participants for them to choose one. In the first filter, My design element is Polaroid photos. I hope this will give the guests a feeling of recording their lives and moods. At the same time, I designed the sentence “YOUARE PRETTY AND CONFIDENT” on the filter. I hope this sentence can encourage them to become more confident and not be bothered by social appearance anxiety. And In another photo, I used the butterfly decoration and I designed the sentence ” PRETTY HUMAN” on the filter.
Three of them chose the filter in Figure 1 and others chose the filter in Figure 2.
The interesting thing is that people who chose figure 1 told me that this filter reminds them of the retro trend that has been particularly popular on social media recently. Everyone is trying to wear retro outfits to make themselves look more fashionable. This reminds me of what I discussed in my last Intervention of Unit 2 that social media set the standard of beauty. I decided to invite some people who are more prestigious in the media to participate in my event or ask them to help promote my event because I hope I can use this popular element to attract more attention.
Figure 1
Figure 2
Number of Guests: 2
In the past time, I have been looking for people with social appearance anxiety and willing to participate in my Intervention. I tried to post my event content and invitation link on Instagram, Wechat, and Little Red Book. And, I also sent messages to ten people I know who suffer from social appearance anxiety. (This includes the guests who participated in my last interview) Finally, I got two responses, a woman named Zhang Hui and a man named Charles.
They are very interested in this event and promise to participate in the entire two-week cycle. In addition, they have also participated in my previous interview event. I am very grateful for their support, but this number is not enough for me to get effective feedback. I will continue to post invitations to this event on social media and try to invite new people through my friends.
Number of Guests: 3
I got a new reply that said YESSS. Her name is Rena. She also participated in my interview event before.
Number of Guests: 5
In the past time, I have invited two guests to participate in my filter activity, namely Kito and Lily. They all found me through the B612 community where I posted the filters, and they were full of curiosity about this event. Kito is a very active person on social media. She said that she is not sure if she has serious social appearance anxiety, but she often cares too much about her appearance, which makes her very emotional. Lily’s condition will be more serious. She used to keep losing weight to look thinner, which made her suffer from bulimia nervosa. Sometimes she has uncontrollable binge eating, and then she loses weight by inducing vomiting, fasting, and excessive exercise. In the process, she will be very disappointed with herself and very anxious about her appearance.
Now I have invited 5 people to participate in my event. Althought they attended this event at different times, I will summarize their feedback at the end of the event.
My initial idea was to make a filter without beauty and add the background music I made to the background music. In the background, I will use a little girl’s voice to compliment everyone, like you’re so beautiful! You’re so cute! I hope this background music can give people who suffer from social appearance anxiety a hint, through constant praise, that you are beautiful and do not need to change. (Below is the first version of the filter I made)
But after discussing my first version of the filter with my tutor Cai, I felt that the voice expression was not straightforward enough because many people may be used to taking photos instead of videos. And it’s troublesome for many people to shoot videos for two consecutive weeks, and it will reduce participation in the event. My mentor Cai gave me a lot of new suggestions. I decided to use some words and patterns on my filter and use affirmative sentences to describe.
Originally, I wanted to upload the filter to Instagram and Facebook, but since my guests are from China, it is not convenient to use these Apps, so I uploaded the filter to an APP called B612, which has no regional restrictions.
At the same time, I uploaded my filter template to the App’s community and opened up the permission to use it. Anyone in the community can use this filter to take selfies for free and anyone who wants to participate in my activities can contact me directly in the community. This is a convenient way for us in the epidemic.
(Below is the first version of the filter I made. This was originally a video but I don’t know why it can’t be uploaded in the blog, so I used a picture instead)
My other literature review comes from Emile Coue’s book The Power of Positive Autosuggestion. In this book, the author states that Long-term positive psychological cues can change people’s behavior by generating positive energy under the action of the subconscious mind.
I want to use this concept in my intervention. I will design a filter, and I will design some encouraging words and expressions on the filter. I hope people with social appearance anxiety will feel confident when using this filter. I will invite a group of people to use this filter for two weeks and tell me how they feel about using it. I think the two-week cycle is a time for people with social appearance anxiety to develop their self-confidence. I hope this long-term positive encouragement can help people with social appearance anxiety believe that they are beautiful and do not need to make any changes.
At the same time, I also tested how often they use the beauty camera.
To verify the effectiveness of using the beauty camera as an Intervention Tool. I interviewed ten people with social appearance anxiety about how often they use the beauty camera. (These people include my previous interviewer)
From my data, everyone who suffers from social appearance anxiety has the habit of using a beauty camera.
At the same time, I also tested how often they use the beauty camera.