The blogger was furious to find her face airbrushed when taking a selfie on her new phone. Photo / Instagram, iammelwells
Popular British author and blogger Mel Wells took to Instagram this week to slam Samsung after discovering that her mobile phone's camera automatically airbrushes her.
Wells posted side-by-side selfies showing one with her "seriously airbrushed face" and one with no filter.
"I think I'll keep my freckles and imperfections since this is how I look in 3D and this is how all my friends see me in real life," Wells wrote.
The full caption on her Instagram post read:
"Wow Samsung. When you get a brand new phone and go to take a selfie and realise that the default setting on the front camera is automatically on "Beauty level 8" which evidently means: seriously airbrushed face. This means everyone who gets a new Samsung phone and flicks the front camera on is automatically being told "Hi, we're Samsung and we think you look way better when we automatically airbrush your selfies for you, x 8!!" Thanks @samsungmobile for the vote of confidence, I think I'll keep my freckles and imperfections since this is how I look in 3D and this is how all my friends see me in real life. I hope young girls are buying iPhones instead of Samsungs. (Wait, do iPhones do this too?) To clarify - no apps here - this is Samsung's DEFAULT FRONT CAMERA SETTING."
Wells - an ex-actor, bulimia sufferer and author of book The Goddess Revolution - argued that young girls should not be encouraged to hide their imperfections.
Most of Wells' 21,000+ Instagram followers agreed with her sentiments, saying that she looks better without the filter and gave the photo over 1300 likes.
But others tried to argue that she could just turn off the automatic airbrush setting.
She responded to those comments with a follow-up Instagram post:
"For those people saying "What's the problem, just turn it off," that wasn't the point I was making. Of course you can turn the setting off/on as you please. The point I was making is that when you first buy a brand new handset, this setting is already automatically applied to the front camera and to beauty level 8. So already assuming the consumer wants to be airbrushed. I wanted to raise this point as I think it's one thing for us the consumer to decide to edit our photo after its been taken, but it's another thing for the manufacturer to do it for us before we've even taken the shot. The more we are told that we are supposed to look flawless, the more unhappy we will feel in our own skin - because none of us are flawless! On the contrary - it is our imperfections that make us most beautiful. Social media comparison has a massive impact on anxiety levels in young people and half the problem is we are being presented with flawless airbrushed photos constantly. In #TheGoddessRevolution there's a chapter called 'The Instaperfect Highlight Reel'. We all use filters and want to look our best, and this is not a rant about never editing photos because we've all done it - just remember when you're scrolling that usually what you're seeing is just an orchestrated and edited snapshot into someone's Instalife."
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