When Sabrina Coleman was in high school, she went through her mother’s phone in search of photos of herself. When she found them, something seemed…off.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my skin's a little pale and very smooth,” Coleman recalls. All the photos, she realized, had been edited to lighten her skin tone and erase her acne. She and her mother use completely different social media platforms, so until this moment Coleman wasn’t aware that her mom was editing photos of her before she posted them. She brushed it off, but a few years later—when Coleman was 20 and experiencing weight fluctuations through college—it happened again. She discovered a photo her mother posted online in which her face and arms were digitally slimmed. “That was the first time [to my knowledge] she more drastically edited my body,” she recalls.
Coleman, now 22, recently went viral on TikTok for sharing the experience of having what she calls a “Facetune mom.” Every time the pair have their photo taken together, often during holidays or big life milestones, her mom makes the same changes to both of them: She lightens their skin, slims their faces, and trims their arms. Coleman’s video, which shows some of these photos before and after her mother’s digital editing, received over one million views and thousands of comments from people who were saddened by Coleman's story. Even more surprising, however, is how many people could relate.
Tammy Ng, a 25-year-old from Los Angeles, didn’t even realize it was all that uncommon for moms to do this kind of editing to photos of their children. “Every time I send [my mom] pictures [of myself], she uses Meitu or other versions of Facetune to edit my pictures, and then she posts it,” she says. “When I first noticed it, I [thought], ‘Wow, my mom doesn’t like how I look.’”
Caroline, a 21-year-old from Michigan who requested to go by first name only for privacy reasons, first noticed her mom’s editing when she was around 13. She had cystic acne, and she realized that her blemishes were removed not just from photos her mom posted to Facebook but also ones she printed and displayed around their home. “It made me [think], ‘Am I supposed to be doing something different?’” Caroline says. “It definitely created an onset of body [image] issues.”
While removing someone’s so-called flaws from a photo can be done in seconds with a few taps and swipes, the act can have lasting damage. “It's hard for a kid to perceive it as anything but ‘My mom wished I looked a different way,’” says Charlotte Markey, PhD, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University and author of Adultish: The Body Image Book For Life. “You're changing how they look, and it can contribute to the intergenerational transmission of appearance and beauty ideals.” In other words, mothers who do this risk fostering insecurities in their children—usually insecurities mothers have about themselves.
After all, in many cases the children aren’t the only ones in the pictures being edited. A Facetune mom’s first target is often herself. Both Coleman and Ng, for example, cite Asian beauty ideals as the reason their mothers feel the need to make such drastic digital changes to their own and others’ appearances. Apps like Meitu often default to filters that align with such beauty ideals; they produce paler skin, bigger eyes, and skinnier faces. It’s why neither Coleman nor Ng have brought this behavior up with their mothers, nor do they hold any resentment toward them. “It's not that she doesn't love me or doesn't think I'm pretty, it is just her trying to fit into those Chinese standards,” Ng says.
“99.9 percent of the time [mothers are] well-meaning, and yet there are so many things we can mess up,” says Markey, who is a Gen X mother just like many of these Facetune moms. “Most women of my generation were brought up with really strict beauty ideals, and it's hard to deal with your own issues so you can parent with a more body-positive approach.”
Like the almond moms (mothers who impose unhealthy dieting and fitness practices on themselves and their children) before them, the Facetune moms’ behavior is a hangover from the diet culture in which they were raised. The ‘70s, and ‘80s, and ‘90s, when many of today’s parents were growing up, were rife with dangerous weight loss pills, sugar-free food alternatives, and fad diets, all in pursuit of thinness. The fat activism movement as we know it didn’t begin to emerge until the late ‘90s, and the concept of body neutrality was popularized as recently as 2015.
These unrealistic standards of being thin (and, for that matter, the expectation to have perfect skin and hair) have always been targeted primarily at women, so it’s not surprising their shadow lingers most over mothers, who anecdotally appear more likely to engage in this kind of editing than fathers. This “intergenerational transmission” also explains why daughters seem to bear the brunt of parental photo editing—although Caroline says her mother would occasionally use editing tools to straighten her brother’s teeth in photos.
But no matter whose image a mother is editing, the consequences for their kids can still be the same. “Being a good digital role model for your children is so important,” says Alanna Powers, the research and program specialist at the Family Online Safety Institute. “If you're Facetuning yourself and your child, they may start to assume that this is acceptable behavior, and they'll start to internalize it.” A child will start to believe there is something about them that needs to be “fixed,” Markey says. That “their parent, or whoever is doing the editing, feels they would look better—be better—if they looked different.” Poor body image in childhood has been linked to depressive symptoms, symptoms of anxiety disorders, and even suicidal thoughts. Coincidentally, mental health issues such as these can negatively impact a kid’s ability to perform well in school and socialize with their peers, among other consequences.
As the ethics of posting content featuring children on social media are debated in the zeitgeist, the ethics of retouching photos of them can feel just as murky. Scrubbing away a red eye or errant strand of windblown hair seems harmless. Even school portraits are sometimes retouched to smooth out kids’ skin and whiten their teeth. But where is the line?
That line, as Markey explains, depends on the editors’ intent. “We use the terminology ‘adaptive appearance investment’ versus ‘maladaptive appearance investment,’” she explains. The former means making changes to one’s appearance wherein “you don't feel obligated and it's fun,” such as a new haircut or a pedicure. Maladaptive appearance investment, however, comes with risks which can range “from time to mental space to money to health,” Markey says. Examples would include over-exercising or undereating, for instance, or maintaining an unrealistic beauty routine.
If you apply this concept in the context of editing your own and others’ pictures, using an app to remove food between teeth or a flyaway hair is harmless, says Markey. But when someone starts drastically altering skin tone and texture, or body shape and size, they can risk mental distress for both themselves and their children.
It’s why, Powers says, one should always ask for their child’s permission before posting any photo of them online but especially an edited one.“A lot of what we speak about [at the Institute] is keeping an open dialogue between your child and you as the parent,” she says. “And if you're planning to edit their appearance in any way—and we would certainly advise against this—you really must make sure that they're OK with this before posting.”
For children looking to approach their parent about this behavior, Markey recommends starting with questions, not accusations. “A child could ask their mom why they are editing the image,” she says. “They could ask what would be wrong with just leaving an image unedited. They could ask to discuss with them what images they post in the first place and make any editing decisions together as well.”
When Caroline was 16, she did just that. She brought her mother with her to therapy and told her how the editing made her feel. “She was mortified,” Caroline recalls. “From there, she started doing some individual work in therapy and realizing her own stuff she has going on.” Now, Caroline and her mother have a great relationship, but she says starting that conversation was “one of the harder things I've had to do.”
While Coleman hasn’t felt the need to speak to her mother directly about the edits she’s received, she has tried to address the problem at the root. The pair have had several unrelated conversations about body neutrality, particularly after she made comments about her college weight gain. “I was like, ‘I get that you're my mom, but I personally think that it's not really anyone's business [than my own].’”
Ng, on the other hand, has ultimately accepted her mother’s Facetuning as an inevitability, given the insecurities that inspire it. “In their mind they're just fitting into those beauty standards,” she says. “Which makes sense, because we [younger people] try to fit into America's beauty standards.” She has not attempted to address the matter directly with her mom.
The mothers of Coleman, Ng, and Caroline all declined or were unable to comment for this story when approached by their daughters.
Someone who grew up under a Facetune mom might understandably retain insecurities borne out of that experience regardless of what their current relationship with their mother is like. The work of healing from them can start simple with self-help books, as Markey suggests, or online support groups like the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders. But some might find themselves in need of direct professional guidance.
“There are therapists that specialize in helping people with body image and eating concerns,” Markey says, adding that “a mental health diagnosis like body dysmorphic disorder or an eating disorder is not necessary to benefit from therapy.”
Facetune moms are acting from the insecurities that plague them, too. But parents who don’t acknowledge their role in this culture of criticism and competition risk raising a generation in which harmful body standards become even more entrenched. If almond moms beget Facetune moms, then a newer, even sneakier variant could be next.
More on body image and mental health:
- TikTokers Are Using Extra-Pale Filters to Get Rid of “Tan Dysmorphia”
- On Learning to Think of My Body As a Whole, Not Parts
- Social Media Is Causing a Mental Health Crisis. This Bill Might Actually Do Something About It
Now, watch Nicola Coughlan try nine things she's never done before:
