• by Gord Hotchkiss , Featured Contributor, March 22, 2022

“Within every dystopia, there’s a little utopia” -- novelist Margaret Atwood

We’re a little obsessed with perfection. For myself, this has taken the form of a lifelong crush on Mary Poppins (Julie Andrews from the 1964 movie), who is “practically perfect in every way.”

We’ve been seeking perfection for some time now. The idea of creating Utopia, a place where everything is perfect, has been with us since the Garden of Eden. As humans have trodden down our timeline, we have been desperately seeking mythical Utopias, then religious ones, which then led to ideological ones.

Some time at the beginning of the last century, we started turning to technology and science for perfection. Then, in the middle of the 20^th century, we abruptly swung the other way, veering towards Dystopia while fearing that technology would take us to the dark side, a la George Orwell’s “1984” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.”

Lately, other than futurist Ray Kurzweil and the starry-eyed engineers of Silicon Valley, I think it’s fair to say that most of us have accepted that technology is probably a mixed bag at best: some good and some bad. Hopefully, when the intended consequences are tallied with the unintended ones, we net out a little to the positive. But we can all agree that it’s a long way from perfection.

This quest for perfection is taking some bizarre twists. Ultimately, it comes down to what we feel we can control, focusing our lives on the thinnest of experiences: that handful of seconds that someone pays attention to our social media posts.

It’s a common psychological reaction: the more we feel that our fate is beyond our control, the more we obsess about those things we feel we can control. And on social media, if we can’t control our world, our country, our town or even our own lives, perhaps our locus of control becomes narrowed to the point where the only thing left is our own appearance.

This effect is exacerbated by our cultural obsession with physical attractiveness. Beauty may only be skin deep, but in our world, it seems to count for everything that matters. Especially on Snapchat and Instagram.

And where there’s a need, there is a technological way. Snapchat filters that offer digitally altered perfection have proliferated. One is Facetune 2,  a retouching app that takes your selfie and adjusts lighting, removes blemishes, whitens teeth and nudges you closer and closer to perfection.

In one blog post, the Facetune team, inspired by Paris Hilton, encourages you to start “sliving.” Not sure what the hell “sliving” is? Apparently, it’s a combination of “slaying it” and “living your best life.” It’s an updated version of “that’s hot” for a new audience.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt if you happen to look like Ms. Hilton or Kim Kardashian. The post assures us that it’s not all about appearance. Apparently, “owning it” and “being kind to yourself” are also among the steps to better “sliving.” But as you read down the post, it does ultimately come back to how you look, reinforced with this pearl of wisdom: “a true sliv’ is also going to look their absolute best when it counts”

And if that sounds about as deep as Saran Wrap, what do you expect when you turn to Paris Hilton for your philosophy of life? Plato she’s not.

Other social filter apps go even farther, essentially altering your picture until it’s no longer recognizable. Bulges are gone, to be replaced by chiseled torsos and optimally rounded butts. Cheeks are digitally sucked in and noses are planed to perfection. Eyes sparkle and teeth gleam. The end product? Sure, it looks amazing. It’s just not you anymore.

With all this pressure put on having a perfect appearance, it’s little wonder that it’s royally messing with our heads (what’s inside the head, not the outside). Hence the new disease of Snapchat Dysmorphia. I wish it were harder to believe in this syndrome -- but it's when people, many of them young girls, book a consultation with a plastic surgeon, wanting to look exactly like the result of their filtered Snapchat selfies.

According to one academic article, one in 50 Americans suffers from body dysmorphic disorder, where sufferers “are preoccupied with at least one nonexistent or slight defect in physical appearance. This can lead them to think about the defect for at least one hour a day, therefore impacting their social, occupational, and other levels of functioning. The individual also should have repetitive and compulsive behaviors due to concerns arising from their appearances. This includes mirror checking and reassurance seeking among others.”

There’s nothing wrong with wanting perfection. As the old saying goes, it might be the enemy of good, but it can be a catalyst for better. We just have to go on knowing that perfection is never going to be attainable.

But social media is selling us a bogus bill of goods: The idea that perfect is possible and that everyone but us has figured it out.