Filtered femininity : How TikTok beauty filters reproduce feminine beauty ideals

Abstract

This thesis examines how TikTok beauty filters reproduce and circulate feminine beauty ideals through their visual design, naming conventions, and platform logic. It brings together scholarship on selfies and body image, gendered and racialised beauty ideals, ageing and visibility, and theoretical perspectives on algorithmic oppression, postfeminism, self-presentation, and self-objectification to analyse beauty filters as socio-technical cultural artefacts rather than neutral tools of self-expression.

Methodologically, the research draws on a manually compiled dataset of 59 beauty filters identified through TikTok's Beauty tab and examined qualitatively using the in-app camera. The analysis identifies recurring patterns of facial modification that collectively homogenise women's faces: smoothing and brightening skin, slimming facial features, enlarging eyes, and plumping lips – reproducing implicitly white, Eurocentric, and youthful ideals of femininity. A disproportionately small number of Effect House creators and heavily recycled design templates further intensify this homogenisation. Meanwhile, filter names and visual iconography consistently frame heavily modified appearances as natural, effortless, or playful, obscuring the extent of their intervention.

The thesis argues that TikTok beauty filters function as socio-technical tools that both reflect and reinforce existing hierarchies of gender, race, and age. As beauty filters grow more sophisticated, their modifications become harder to detect, and therefore harder to challenge. This thesis contributes to ongoing debates about gender, technology, and visual culture by demonstrating how seemingly minor digital tools participate in the broader standardisation of femininity.