The Rise of Micro-Yassification

Why does everyone online look like an impossible version of themselves?

The other day I met a friend in the park for coffee and informed her of a discovery I’d made. (This is going to make me sound grossly out of touch to 90% of my fellow millennials-and-younger.) I rarely post on social media, and I have no influencer ambitions, so I’ve been out of the loop on Facetune for a few years. The last time I downloaded it out of curiosity, the face morphs were of the RuPaul variety - instantly clockable and appealing only to a very specific crowd with a very specific aesthetic. 

Recently, however, I attended a show for one of my favorite artists after a brief round of steroids, which had caused a lymph node in my neck to swell to the size of a grape. I managed to snag a meet-and-greet—one of the highlights of my year. The resulting photo of the artist and me was beautiful, except for the bizarre swelling on my neck, enhanced by the camera flash. (The swelling only lasted two days. Typical!)

After trying and failing to fix it in Lightroom I downloaded Facetune and activated a free trial. And then I discovered what I’m going to call micro-yassification.

For those unfamiliar, Facetune now offers a wide range of appearance modifications for both still photos and videos. Gone are the days of the InstaFace Michael Jackson nose. The tweaks Facetune offers today are so subtle yet powerful that you can take almost any photo and give it just a little bit of oomph—transforming and beautifying the subject without compromising their visual identity.

Back in the park, I showed my friend a random candid photograph of myself taken in the yellow artificial light of a subway station. 

“Here’s my face normally,” I said, pointing out the texture on my skin, the dark circles under my eyes, and the front-camera distortion of my nose. “And now here it is with the ‘cute’ filter set to 30%.”

“Oh my god,” she said, peering closer. “Wow. Wow wow. I can’t tell you did anything to it.”

“I know, right?” I said. “And look—even if you move it to 100% cute, it still looks like me. You can tell there’s something, but you wouldn’t necessarily call it a catfish. But if you set it to, like, 30% cute and then use the ‘enhance’ option, no one could tell on a phone that it’s edited.”

“This is insane,” she said. “Do you think everyone is just doing this?”

Perhaps not everyone, but I’d wager a high percentage of people (primarily women) are.

Once you’re aware of it, you start to see it—or at least suspect it—everywhere: on Instagram, Facebook, dating apps, even LinkedIn. A large number of people online have started to diverge in appearance from their real-life, flesh avatars.

Micro-yassification contributes to that “just-out-of-reach” sense that everything online is slightly more beautiful, slightly more perfect than reality. When your Hinge profile is full of micro-yassified dating options, you’ll always feel like something better is around the corner—that whoever is in front of you is merely a runner-up to the infinite potential hidden away in your phone.

When your friends and acquaintances on social media are micro-yassified you can end up feeling unfavorably compared no matter how hard you try to nail your outfit, styling, and picture angles. 

There’s been a lot of talk of Gen Z’s embrace of digital imperfection, but I have to wonder how much of it is of the micro-yassified variety. If cosmetic procedure data is to be trusted, there has never been more interest in tweaking one’s real self to match an ideal, wherever the ideal is coming from.

A recent trend I’ve noticed percolating on Tumblr, Pinterest, and Twitter captures just how insidious micro-yassification can be. In this trend, old photos of celebrities are subtly Facetuned and then presented as genuine, served up for “Y2K” or “classic beauty” inspiration.

In one such post, a “colorized” picture of Marilyn Monroe is presented. However the image is not just colorized; it’s micro-yassified.

I took the altered image and flipped its orientation to match the original, and then changed the color grading to a similar black-and-white. Immediately the tweaks became obvious. Whereas real-life Marilyn’s eyes had the slight corner droop of a downward angle, yassified Maryliyn retained a symmetrical fox-eyed look.

In another post, a 90’s photo of Cate Blanchett is micro-yassified. Apart from the hair, which is obvious, the tweaks here are even more micro. Her skin is lightened, and everything about her is softened a tiny amount, just 5-10%. You almost can’t see it, but with the photos side-by-side it becomes clear that the altered one is beautiful in a way that no human, not even Cate Blanchett, can be in reality.

Is micro-yassification a bad thing? I’d flip that question and ask: who is it good for? First: plastic surgeons, who are busier than ever inventing new micro-surgeries to address micro ‘faults’ which have risen to public consciousness primarily from social media and photo manipulation; second, aestheticians and injectors for the same reason. Also: the owners of Facetune and other subscription appearance apps; the owners of dating apps, who receive more ad and subscription revenue the more users spend time chasing the impossible; the owners of social media companies whose users spend hours scrolling influencer, beauty and enhancement content. The list goes on. Anyone who profits from appearance insecurity is a winner here.

So, who is it bad for? Pretty much everyone else. Especially those who spend copious time or money trying to compete with these unreal standards. But also those whose expectations and desires are being subtly shaped by these manipulations—often without their knowledge.

There are people who find life significantly less enjoyable, fulfilling, and beautiful than it should be; who secretly always find their partners lacking; whose image of success is constantly being tweaked and refined by these invisible strings.

The Overton Window for beauty standards is shifting toward an extreme dominated by virtuality. Widespread dissatisfaction—both internal and external, both with the self and with others—is the natural result. This is why such a little thing seems, in my opinion, so sinister. We’re living in a world where we look at a photograph of one of the most beautiful humans to have lived and still find it lacking.

The worst part is that there’s really nothing you can do about it. Every day people who are fully aware of these manipulations nevertheless go and get Botox, fillers, and plastic surgery consults. Every day people who are fully aware of the falsification before their eyes still feast them on digital bodies and digital lives for hours of their own real lives. There are almost no hard disincentives for creating, sharing, or profiting off this pipeline. 

Perhaps in 2011 Jezebel would have claimed that simply being aware is enough; or, worse, that this phenomenon is somehow empowering. Thankfully that era of choice feminism is behind us. 

Now we’re left with the bleak recognition that we’re all subjects together in this grand psychological experiment. Seems to be going great so far!