We Know It’s Fake, But We Still Feel the Pressure

Miss Philippines

We scroll, we double-tap, and we remind ourselves: it’s not real.

But our bodies still tense, our self-image still shifts, and our reflection still feels like something to fix.

Even when we know beauty is manufactured, we can’t escape the pressure to live up to it. Gretchen Andrew’s Facetune Portraits exposes why that illusion still holds power.

Gretchen Andrew’s Facetune Portraits unpacks this contradiction. The series uses AI-generated “enhancements” on portraits of international beauty queens — revealing how technology redefines the “ideal” face again and again.

What’s most striking isn’t the transformation, but our reaction to it.

Even when we know the image is synthetic, it affects us. The human mind can’t always separate what’s fake from what’s familiar.

Andrew’s work highlights how algorithmic beauty operates less like a lie and more like a constant whisper — repeating the same shape, same skin tone, same smile until it becomes a norm we can’t ignore.

By turning that invisible influence into visible art, Facetune Portraits asks us to look harder — not just at the images, but at the systems that define them.