Unit 3: Intervention(Beauty Camera)

In the first tutor class of Unit 3, my tutor Cai asked me some questions. What are my interests? What am I doing now? What do I want to do in the future? These questions helped me to reconsider my Intervention. I hope to inject my passion and interest into my project. I have always liked to study the development of consumer products, and I have also worked in consumer product start-ups. In addition, China is a country with huge consumption and demand. There have countless companies are studying how to attract consumers to buy their products. There is no doubt that social media is the best publicity medium. According to survey data, people spend an average screen time of 5.4 hours on their mobile phones daily. This is the reason why the development of social media is very fast.

Therefore, in my intervention, I want to choose the beauty camera as my tool. As a new type of consumer application, beauty cameras are widely used in China. There are different types of beauty cameras for consumers to choose. Some can provide better-looking filters, some can change the size of people’s facial features. People are willing to share photos modified by the beauty camera on social networks. There is no problem with sharing beautiful photos with everyone. But more and more people will be addicted to themselves in the beauty camera, and thus cannot accept who they are. So I wanted to make a filter that didn’t have any beautifying effect. I hope that through this filter, people can accept who they are, instead of living in the illusion of a beauty camera.

Chat Record Group 2

KOL: Angelene,

Rena

Angelene: What is your definition of beauty? When will you feel intense facial anxiety?
Rena: From my point of view, the definition of beauty is to be comfortable with yourself.
I think the anxiety is generally in a big environment. For example, when I went skiing before, the girls were all Internet celebrities and they all looked the same. I wonder if this is a standard of beauty?
But when I come out from there and come back to life, I think it’s okay. I’ll still be myself.
As long as I don’t put myself in that very stressful environment, I think it’s ok.
Angelene: Does that mean that your appearance anxiety comes from the environment? For example, when you are in an environment with many beautiful women, there is a kind of pressure?
Rena: I don’t think I will have pressure around natural beauties, but you will feel that you can change and become as beautiful as they are when facing artificial beauties.

Angelene: So what do you think of KOL ? Because we will post a lot of content about beauty or recommend you some beauty products. Does this put pressure on you too?
Rena: Sometimes
Because this is a feeling that guides everyone to work hard to be beautiful.
But my view of KOL is that they want to make money first.
Angelene: How do you adjust your anxiety now?
Rena: I think it’s weight loss, fitness, and makeup
I think it will relieve anxiety after fitness.
Angelene: I agree! I think fitness will positively affect people’s life state because it seems to be an attitude to life.
Rena: Yes, the deep level of anxiety is still negative
Angelene: It is this kind of life attitude that will make you satisfied with your life and state, including your appearance.
Angelene: Have you ever been overeating? For a while, I have been overeating when I am particularly anxious about my appearance, and then I deliberately skip meals to lose weight
Rena: I have had it too, but I think binge eating is a manifestation of escapism.
I don’t think it can solve any problems. This is back to the attitude of negatively dealing with the problem. I sometimes think that people with anxious looks must be the audience of kol, and kol is the product of anxiety
But there are still some kols doing content, good content to inspire people.


Angelene: As a KOL, I will also see many followers commenting below that they are anxious about their appearance. But what do you think, as a person watching these content, do you think we can help you?
Rena: I hope your content can guide us and encourage us to be more authentic
Angelene: Uh uh understand
But as a KOL, when we face brand promotion, we often use exaggerated descriptions to help the brand gain people’s recognition. Do you think this will affect your choice? Or do you think how to promote it to avoid making followers feel anxious about their appearance?
Rena: Many advertisements are now obvious, we already have this distinguishing ability.
I think it’s a good way to mark this as an advertisement
Angelene: Haha understand because we are also very troubled with this problem because this is the value of our career survival.
At the same time, I will also guide everyone in the right direction for their own beauty in my future content.

Feedback from the Video of Cloe

Feedback 1 :

I am 21 years old. I used to be afraid to try shorts and skirts because I wasn’t confident about my body. My skin is yellow and black, so I only have black and white clothes in my wardrobe. However, after a period of extreme anxiety and confusion, I realized that only by loving myself and life can I find my most comfortable state. I started experimenting with all kinds of new colors and different styles, pink, green, yellow, blue. I started to realize I could be anything I wanted to be. I began to care less about what people thought. Whether it’s your clothes or your future life choices. Sisters, confidence really can bring happiness and peace, we are the most beautiful!

Feedback 2:

I thought I was ugly until I was 19. Now I’m 23 years old and I know I’m the most beautiful person in the world.

Feedback 3:

While reconciling with ourselves, we should also remember to give others the right guidance so that they will not judge others. Because a lot of feelings of inferiority come from other people’s evaluations of us.

Feedback 4:

I love this topic. I’ve been going through a phase of self-acceptance lately, and I really need this outside perspective to support myself. Thanks for sharing, I hope I will become a better self ~

Feedback 5:

I am 24 years old. When I was in high school, I felt inferior because of my fat body. But after trying to lose weight successfully, I did not become confident. Later, I was anxious because of acne on my face and felt that I would feel confident as long as the acne disappeared. But the acne disappeared and I still have no confidence. This year, I felt severe facial anxiety again. I felt that I didn’t have nice double eyelids and a tall nose. I even looked up to the plastic surgeon. Recently I found that I was very picky about myself in every period and didn’t really accept myself, too. I care about the opinions of others. Now I try to reconcile with myself, accept my imperfect self, love myself, and take myself as the center.

The Main Question of The Interviews (between people with social appearance anxiety and KOL)

1: What is your definition of beauty?

2: Do you think there is a standard for beauty? What is it?

3:When do you generally feel intense social appearance anxiety?

4: How do you regulate yourself to get rid of or reduce appearance anxiety?

5: What kind of role do you think KOL plays?Positive or Negative?

6: What do you think KOL can do to help people with appearance anxiety?

A video about Kol’s View of Appearance Anxiety and Feedback From Audiance

https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1eq4y1L7jB

My previous experience working in the media industry made me realize that major key opinion leaders on social media promote specific products by posting lots of content about the definition of beauty, thus making more people feel appearance anxiety. For example, when they are advertising the cleaning effect of some kind of cleansing product, they will say that their skin becomes delicate and without pores after using the product. However, in my observation, some of the key opinion leaders are also facing appearance anxiety, and I can use their influence on social media to lead people to realize that there is no standard of beauty. In addition, Cloe has also suffered from social appearance anxiety before, but now she has become confident about her appearance. So I think she will have a lot to share with people. So I invite her to make a video on the topic of social appearance anxiety to encourage people.

After the video was released, the whole network has received a total of 500,000 views and received feedback from more than 500 comments. In the comments, many people shared their stories about how they deal with social appearance anxiety. And I’ve gotten a lot of feedback that this video has given them a lot of support and confidence to fight against social appearance anxiety.

I will post these feedbacks later.

Interventions: Natural Filters

I plan to design a natural filter based on this activity. I hope this will help people realize that they don’t need to worry about changing their looks to apply some beauty filters.

I’m going to send this filter to people who are participating in the event, and I hope it will encourage them in the future to accept themselves for who they are and not be affected by other external events

Interventions: Messageboard

I decided to keep the whole event down to five groups, ten people. In addition to the one-on-one chat room, I was also considering whether it would be possible for everyone to participate in an event, but it’s difficult to organize a meeting now due to the different geographical locations.

So I was thinking about whether I could create a message board after the chat room activity. Everyone can share their feelings about participating in this activity. Or share your new thoughts on the topic.

Interventions:Chat Room

I’ve been working on my online chat room for the past few weeks, and so far I’ve invited two pairs of members, two KOLs, and two people with appearance anxiety.

In the beginning, the problem that bothered me for a long time was choosing which APP to chat on because I wanted to invite people from different countries and different cultural backgrounds to chat to make sure that the data had global significance. However, people in different countries are used to different social software, so I can only carry out this process through different chat software. At present, I mainly choose two software, one is Instagram and the other is WeChat.

The second question also came about how to ensure the smooth progress of the whole chat process. When the first chat room was held, I chose to participate in the whole process, so I set up a chat room for three people. But I find it hard for both parties to communicate naturally, to discuss their problems in depth, So when the second chat started, I chose to set up a chat room for two people, and I asked both parties that I wanted to see the transcript of the chat.