⚠️I know this may get a variety of opinions. I only ask that if you comment, please remain kind when stating your opinion. Don't use it to hurt anyone. ⚠️
🌀 Random Reflections: Why I Don’t Like Face Filters, Makeup, or Plastic Surgery
By someone who still believes in the beauty of being unedited.
Nature doesn’t copy-paste.
It handcrafts.
Every leaf, every face, every cloud, similar, but never the same.
That subtle variation?
That’s where life lives.
That’s what makes something feel alive.
But somewhere along the spiral,
we started to believe sameness was beauty.
That erasing ourselves
was how we earned love.
So now we stare into cameras
and let them paint us into versions we don’t even recognize.
I don’t hate filters.
I hate what they erase.
I don’t hate makeup.
I hate what it hides.
I don’t hate plastic surgery.
I hate the lie that told you
you needed it to be enough.
What I’m saying is complicated.
It’s tender.
So let me go slow.
Because this isn’t an attack.
It’s grief.
There’s something tragic
about watching a face I found beautiful, fade behind a filter.
I knew them before. Before the blur, before the digital smoothing iron pressed out the magic of their real expressions.
And when I see the new version,
the one they present to the world,
I feel a pang in my chest.
Not judgment.
Loss.
They were beautiful.
Not in the magazine sense,
not in the trending sense.
In the real sense.
The kind of beauty that makes you want to slow down
and look.
Not scroll.
Look.
Now I see the filter, and nothing looks back.
Makeup and surgery and filters all do the same thing:
they say, “This version is more worthy.”
More worthy of love.
Of likes.
Of being remembered.
But the cost is high.
Because when you edit the face that holds your story,
you risk erasing the parts that taught you to love.
You know what I’m talking about.
That scar on your chin?
The one from when you laughed so hard you fell off your bike?
That line beside your mouth?
It only shows up when you smile like you mean it.
The freckle constellation under your left eye?
It marks your uniqueness in this universe.
You were a universe.
Now you’re a reflection.
And I don’t know how to find you in it.
There’s a sickness spreading.
But it’s not on the skin.
It’s under it.
In the soul.
It whispers:
> “You’re not beautiful unless you change.”
“You’re not lovable unless you hide.”
“You’re not valid unless you fit.”
But that’s not truth.
That’s marketing.
Someone profits when you feel unworthy.
Someone profits when your face becomes a canvas
they can sell back to you.
And the worst part?
Most of us don’t even realize
we’re buying into our own disappearance.
I don’t want to see a perfected version of you.
I want to see your humanity.
Show me your real eyes.
The way they widen when you're excited, the way one squints just a little more when you're skeptical.
Let your skin be skin.
Not glass.
Let your laugh-lines write poetry in motion. Let your pores breathe.
You were never meant to be a statue. You were meant to move me.
I know.
I know there’s pressure.
You didn’t invent the standard.
You just live inside it.
I’m not blaming you.
I’m standing beside you
and screaming at the standard.
Because I miss you.
The real you.
I miss all of us
before we believed we had to be someone else
to be seen.
It’s wild, isn’t it?
That we spend our lives begging to be noticed and then when someone finally looks,
we hide behind a filter.
“See me,” we beg.
“But don’t look too close.”
What are we afraid they’ll see?
Flaws?
Or feelings?
Because sometimes, I think it’s not the wrinkle we fear, it’s the truth behind it.
That we’ve aged.
That we’ve suffered.
That we’ve changed.
That we are, in fact, real.
And real is messy. And raw. And sometimes breathtakingly beautiful in ways perfection could never be.
I want to live in a world where your face is enough.
Not because it’s flawless,
but because it’s yours.
I want to live in a world where a teenager doesn’t cry in the mirror
because her nose doesn’t match the one on her feed.
Where a woman in her 50s isn’t asked if she’s “doing anything about that” when she smiles.
Where men don’t believe that their worth is in sharp jaws
or impossible symmetry.
Where people don’t filter out their stories just to fit in a feed.
Nature never asked you to be perfect. It asked you to be alive.
The tree with the crooked branch
catches more wind and sings more songs.
The flower that opens late still gets sunlight.
The river with the uneven banks
makes the best sound when it runs.
Your face is part of that same rhythm. It was shaped by laughter, by heartbreak, by sun and time and love.
And you’re going to filter that?
You’re going to smooth it out?
Please don’t.
Please let us see you.
Here’s the secret no one profits from:
You are already enough!
You are already interesting!
Already valuable!
Already beautiful in ways
that cannot be mass-produced!
You don’t need permission to show up as you!
You just need courage.
And I know that’s not easy.
I know that living unfiltered
in a filtered world can feel like showing up to a costume party naked.
But the truth is:
You are not the strange one.
The world is just afraid of real things.
So this is me saying:
If you’ve started hiding behind the blur. Come back. Come back to your crooked smile. To your wild laugh. To the line on your forehead that says “I’ve thought deeply.”
Come back to your eyes, the ones that don’t track with any trend but say everything when you feel seen.
Come back to yourself.
Because some of us out here?
We’re not looking for polished.
We’re looking for presence.
And you, unfiltered, are more than enough of that.
If this reflection stirred something in you, let it stay stirred. Don’t rush to smooth it. Let it wrinkle. Let it live.
Thank you for turning,
Eric.
P.S. If this reflection landed with you, I’d love to know. Tap the like button, leave a comment, restack it, share it, subscribe, or just follow along.
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