Skin Deep
1.9
So returning to the idea of "prettiness ratings" and shallowness profiles (SP), it would be important to look at other possibilities enabled by the adoption of such a practice. Based on the input of these SP trends, someone could tell whether or not some sort of hypothetical cosmetic shift would be appealing to various prospective audiences. For instance, if I were considering dying my hair brown, I could use something like photoshop to artificially dye my hair in a photo and submit it to this SP trend follower for advice. I could ask it to judge based on the opinion of women in the same general demographic as my current girlfriend, or even based her own profile if I had access to it, or perhaps women 17-21 years old, or guys in their late 20's or whoever it is that I might be trying to attract. In this way we'll once again be moving more and more toward the "ideal" body type, which is sort of messed up, because it will be a literal way of seeing that people prefer nicely tanned and toned blue-eyed blond-haired Hitler youth types, which would be a rather depressing graph to watch.
Optimistic: The formula might surprise us, however, because it may affect the way advertisers choose models which would in turn affect our idea of beauty. Perhaps we would find that a more realistic physique (neither fat nor anorexic) is more attractive than what we are currently being shown, which would slowly shift the ideal away from where it is today.
Pessimistic: It might end up moving us toward that type of ever more unrealistic reality- especially if people can see it update and play out in real time. The sad thing is that this is necessarily a feedback loop situation, where people decide what is hot partially based on what they are shown which is based off of what people have decided is hot- hence we slowly gravitate into a spiral of clones. Also, I'm guessing that as opposed to being based on realism- especially taking photoshop into account- "ideal" features will become more and more exaggerated and artificial. This has already happened in porn (the harbinger of all practices as disheartening as they are inevitable).
Implication and possible antidote: As actual face to face interaction becomes less and less common its lack might offer a solution to this shallow hot-or-not cesspool. I recently saw an ad for a camera that automatically corrects things like acne and other blemishes when it takes photos. Therefore it wouldn't be too far fetched to think of everyone developing their own personal photoshop profile that would know exactly what alterations to perform to make his/her photos look better.
Say you have a scar on the right side of your face. You manually edit the scar out of a few photos while it records the process (airbrush, etc.) and eventually it knows how to repeat the process for any photo automatically before you post them on something like facebook. Therefore, when people see you, they see you without the mark. As people use these services more often and more exclusively (I already write regularly to people who I've never met in real life...) then the "real" version of the person becomes the "fixed" version, without the leftover scar from a dog bite as a child, or the disfiguring acne, or the burn marks, or even the lack of an arm/eye/etc. The possibilities would become increasingly drastic as these automated programs improve at realistic appearing automated corrections.
But.........
We've only talked about correctional tools. These won't end up being the most common. Think about plastic surgery- at first it started to help those who had been disfigured through birth or through some sort of accident, but what are the most common type today? The elective cosmetic type by far. The same would happen here. Someone would want their hair to be a different color, or even a collection of variable colors. Someone else would want a flatter stomach, or to be slightly horizontally compressed to appear skinnier. Someone else would want larger muscles, breasts, eyes, lips, a smaller nose, head, torso, etc. These could all be automatically inserted and changed at random. Someone else would want different features, for instance the chest of a famous athlete for a picture at the beach. This could be fused with the existing picture to create a realistic synthesis. There are already early versions of this technology:
<-------------Two of these people don't exist.
"Face swapping software finds faces in a photograph and swaps the features in the target face from a library of faces. This can be used to "de-identify" faces that appear in public, such as the faces of people caught by the cameras of Google Street View. So instead of simply blurring the face, the software can substitute random features taken from say Flickr's pool of faces. A mouth here, an eye there."
So someone could decide to have the nose of Scarlett Johansson or the eyes of James Franco. I say someone here because it would add a whole new level of gender blurring possibilities. Someone could choose to feminize or masculate certain or all of their photos, reflecting the way they feel about themselves on the inside or perhaps just in order to see how their unique features would work in a different setting (race as well, which might lead to the ever nasty subject caricaturization.....) This brings us to an important point: all of these features seem "shallow", "unnatural", and absurd, but in reality, it would allow people to design themselves almost like they already create avatars. In an important way it would also be surprisingly less shallow than relying on the genetic lottery and social fashions to determine visual beauty.
And think about what would happen if this whole system were hooked up to some sort of mixed reality glasses to function in real time in real life......
Cosmetic shifts wouldn't necessarily have to be so drastic. We could also create algorithms for clothing or style more generally. There's already this:
"StyleHop, a new fashion startup launching today, is looking to help users pick out the best outfits of the season without having to wade through countless user reviews.
The site ranks outfits on a five star scale based on user input. But instead of using a Hot-Or-Notesque stream of outfits to gather ratings, StyleHop offers a series of social games, each of which ask for a few ratings at a time so users don’t get bored. Included among these games is a Price Is Right-style Flash game that asks users to guess how much they think an individual item of clothing costs (between each round users are asked to rate a few outfits). To help instill a competitive atmosphere the site keeps track of how other users fare, which presumably leads players to continue playing the game (and rate more clothes). StyleHop also plans to offer games across popular social networks like Facebook and MySpace, so it can gain a large user base.
Using the data it collects from these games, the site can generate fashion recommendations to members (each outfit is tagged with certain attributes so broad trends can be established). For now the site is primarily concerning itself with college students, allowing users to view general clothing trends at certain universities.
StyleHop President David Reinke says that the company is going to generate a large portion of its revenues through affiliate fees as it directs users to online stores to purchase the items they see on the site. But the majority of StyleHop’s proceeds will come from specialized studies that the company will offer to retailers and designers as part of a premium subscription model. Clothing companies will be able to ask StyleHop to select a sample of users from a specific demographic, who will be invited to participate in studies where they’ll be asked to rate potential product offerings for the upcoming season. In return, participants will receive some form of compensation (like a gift card from the retailer)."
The whole game thing is a stupid ploy that won't be necessary once these
SP become useful and therefore common. This would allow for very utilitarian automated advice based off of statistics. Say you wanted to go shopping for new clothes. You could input some pictures of yourself as well as a general description of the color/style/fit/brand of clothing that you usually wear and where you plan on going shopping. The system would then create a list of suggested items and where to find them in which store for what price
(like the restaurant thing we talked about before). This saves you time, the store money (less reshelving), and provides valuable statistics for everyone involved, which will be recycled into the system as stores learn what people buy and thus how to produce and market items more efficiently.
Also, returning to cosmetic shifts, say you're tired of your clothes and want to get a whole new wardrobe for a complete change. You could input some pictures of yourself which the formula would analyze to determine your general body type (skinny jeans don't look good on everyone). Based on who you claimed to be trying to attract it would determine what they would probably like. It would then advise you where to shop (businesses will naturally provide a complete inventory to promote this strange new market) and could even generate a computerized image of you wearing each prospective outfit. The same process would work for haircuts, makeup, tattoos, piercings, glasses, tanning, and pretty much everything shallow and big bu$iness.