If you, like me, are an unemployed millennial woman who likes makeup and spends upwards of four hours a day on TikTok, you also might have recently reached the ‘ChatGPT helped me glow up’ side of the app.
And if you, like me, took years of emotional excavation and experimental haircuts to glow up on your own, you might also feel a little upset by this.
This latest phenomenon involves a bunch of young women on ChatGPT uploading photos of themselves to the AI assistant and telling it to make them hot(ter). They’re asking it to act as ‘an elite personal stylist’, for example, and ‘objectively’ analyse their face shape, read their seasonal colours, determine their best hair length, and suggest where they might want to try some filler for “optimal facial balance”—optional.
And the women are happily obliging. They’re cutting their hair, buying brand new makeup, and booking expensive microneedling appointments. I even saw one girl start a supplement regime based solely on the computer’s recommendations. (IMO, not to be advised without consulting your doctor.)
There was a lot I was immediately bothered by about this— such as the willing handover of our faces to tech overlords who may eventually make AI porn out of us. But I was most bothered by the part of the glow-ups we can’t see: what’s lost when we outsource our self-construction.
Of course, like any dutiful writer, I wanted to see if the TikTok girls had a point, so tried an AI glow-up for myself.
To get a proper ChatGPT glow-up, it’s recommended to upload a bare-faced photo of yourself in natural light, to get a real sense of what’s wrong with you. But I have a Capricorn mother for that – and if my face is going to end up in, say, some cyptocurrency commercial I don’t get paid for, I at least want to be wearing mascara.
So I took a selfie in front of my desk after I’d already gotten ready for the day and asked for the standard workup: ‘What makeup and skincare would you recommend for me?’
Whoever trained ChatGPT taught it well, as it knew to start with a compliment. ‘You already have beautiful skin–clear, glowy, and balanced,’ it simpered. ‘So this is about enhancing radiance and maintaining elasticity.’ Then it went on to suggest several basic skincare products I already have in my medicine cabinet: cleanser, vitamin C, moisturizer, retinol and sunscreen.
The makeup and hair results were equally as meh, suggesting traditional styles and popular products that would, if nothing else, ensure I look like everyone else–soft layers with long bangs, a serum foundation, a peachy rose blush and a champagne highlighter.
I was a little disappointed. I either wanted to be told I was drop-dead gorgeous or ripped to shreds, so I tried to get it to do the latter.
‘What else might make me look better?’ I wrote. ‘Include treatments such as Botox and filler, etc.’
That’s when AI took the gloves off.
‘Suggested enhancements…’ it wrote next to the sparkle emoji, before listing off corrections for each of my features: under-eye filler (‘to brighten’), a slight brow lift, subtle eyelash enhancement, light plumpness to my upper lip ‘for balance’, contour definition at the jaw (filler), light cheek volume to lift the midface, and slight Botox on the forehead.
‘Overall,’ it added, it was trying to ‘provide a slight symmetry correction, but nothing too uncanny valley (aka CGI-like).’
I asked if it could apply the tweakments it suggested to my photo, and here’s what I got:
Subtle, indeed.
The whole thing made me pretty sad. It made me think about how I would feel if I had this technology when I was a teenager or in my early 20s, back before I learned how to fill in my eyebrows or that how you look can’t solve all your problems.
Not to be Grandpa Simpson shaking my cane at the clouds, but back in the late 90s, your ugly, awkward years were usually… ugly and awkward. There was little hope for the clunky and inept among us. High Street makeup was chalky, and we straightened our hair with an iron. And it wasn’t until my 20s that I encountered body glitter for the first time in the wild.
And before that, pre-Internet, it was even harder to look like the person you wanted to be. As young teens, we searched high and low for speciality items that spoke to us. We had to put in real miles—at the mall, thumbing through magazines and catalogues, all to find the specific accoutrement that would represent who we were.
For me, one of those was a pair of shoes.
I’d never seen anything like them. They were wild. Big, loud and silver. I was convinced they were the lynchpin missing from my life, the key that would unlock sudden popularity and universal adoration.
They were gorgeous and unique, so of course my mom didn’t get them. My dad didn’t either. They both routinely referred to them as ‘hideous’ and ‘clodhoppers.’ It didn’t matter, though. I loved them.
While writing this piece, thinking back on them fondly, I wondered if I could find them. I did, on eBay. And…
These shoes dared to ask: what if Bozo did Ketamine?
My mom’s never been more right. They’re giving IT does acid with the crew from Medieval Times. They’re giving ‘I am a bridge troll, small and clever, answer my riddle or enter never.’
But they meant so much to me. Not only did no one else in my school have them – for good reason, I can see now – but I sourced them myself. I found them in the back of a teen catalogue, bought them with my own money, and had to fill out an IRL order form to get them, which makes cringing at them that much sweeter.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I think young women should have to suffer because I did — I’m not a boomer. It’s more that, as women, I want us to keep as many unnecessary shoulds out of our lives as possible.
Womanhood is a tornado of shoulds that only get louder and harder to solve as you get older.
Should you take that job? Meet up with that guy? Start wearing bronzer? Move across the country, get a red light mask, go to therapy? Stop therapy, lose 15 pounds, fix your screen time? Should you have a kid, stop the medicine, go high protein?
We don’t need any more shoulds, especially if they come from robots in fake lab coats. Besides, the AI isn’t even telling us what’s beautiful; it’s regurgitating everything it’s ever seen online. It’s pulling a statistical average. There’s a chance your upper lip is fine the way it is.
Self-expression is the project of a lifetime. It’s hard and tiresome. It takes trial and error, risk and failure, and really ugly shoes. But it’s also deeply rewarding, continuously having to find yourself somewhere amongst the experiments.
It seems like it’s one of the only parts that’s up to us, so maybe it’s time to try to hold on to the parts we get to choose.
MORE: ITV legend speaks out after influx of messages and urges fans to ‘please listen’
MORE: Here’s why Keir Starmer thinks technology will actually make us ‘more human’
MORE: The real reason behind ‘Stop Hiring Humans’ ads appearing on the Tube
