Last Blog Post! Let's Talk Meitu

The thing that shook me the most over the course of this semester was learning about Meitu. It’s one thing to use snapchat filters when talking to your crush to make you look cute, but to have a culture that is completely obsessed with these filtered versions of reality, so much so that individuals spends thousands of dollars on cosmetic surgery to alter their physical appearances, does not seem real. But it is.

Oh, AND THEN they make a living off of, not an educated job, but by taking videos of themselves looking prettily into the camera! This is a fantastic thing for them now (and I applaud them for profiting off the system while they can), but what happens a few years down the road when this is just a fad trend of the past and they have forever altered their appearance and have no qualifications for other employment. The Meitu life is unsustainable. It is kind of terrifying that an entire society has bought into this sensation.

Celebrities such as Kim Kardashian, and her sisters, have profited in similar ways, but through entrepreneurship boosted by their short-term fame and beauty. This seems like a much more sustainable, and educated, way to pursue life. By setting up profitable businesses, that can make a name in a short-term spotlight, these will be able to generate revenue for years to come. Similar things have happened with child stars such as the Olson twins. This is smart! Meitu does not seem to be. I guess I personally just don’t see Meitu as a positive thing. It is nice the way the vloggers seem to pull people into their everyday lives and offer multiple perspectives of the world, but these casual videos are so planned out and choreographed that they, much like the Meitu personalities themselves, are only feeding into the toxic “perfect image” of the world. I’d love to see a study done on eating disorders and body dysmorphia from before Meitu’s release to now. Yikes. If individuals with the money to take a professional scalpel to their face are still not satisfied, imagine what teenagers without money are thinking, and doing, about their own images.