We now dub thee “Insta-worthy”

Beauty filters may not be as contemporary an idea as we thought. Last year, while cleaning a 17th-century portrait of Diana Cecil, conservators discovered that Diana’s image was altered more than 100 years after the painting was completed.

• The retouching wasn’t as obvious as Snapchat’s dog filter, but Diana’s face was clearly altered – her lips plumped, double chin removed, and hairline lowered to appear more full.

Diana isn’t the only case of Renaissance retouching. A similar discovery occurred in 2014, when a 16th-century portrait of Isabella Medici that Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art was about to toss out was revealed to have been retouched in the 19th century.

Retouching, online filters – have we ever truly been happy with our appearances?

Regardless of the answer (“no”), social media and all of its available filters haven't helped. In a 2021 study conducted by City, University of London:

• 94% of women said they felt "pressure to look a certain way on social media.”
• 75% said they felt they would “never live up to the images [they] see,” and 60% said they “sometimes felt depressed as a result.”
• Nearly 80% said social media made them feel bad about themselves most or at least half of the time.

🤳 Zoom out: 600 million people use augmented reality filters on Instagram or Facebook monthly, while 76% of Snapchat users use them daily, according to data from 2020, the most recent we could find.