When Beauty Became the Algorithm

Beauty once celebrated individuality — the freckle, the imperfection, the unexpected. Today, that uniqueness has been replaced by algorithmic sameness.

Every scroll shows the same faces, the same poses, the same “flawless” perfection.

Through Facetune Portraits, Gretchen Andrew explores how digital perfection has numbed our sense of what’s beautiful. The series uses the same tools designed to “enhance” and “improve” to instead expose the psychological cost of constant optimization.

:Beauty used to be unique. Now, “perfection” is everywhere — and it’s making us miserable.

“Perfection,” Andrew suggests, isn’t aspirational anymore — it’s oppressive. The portraits, warped and smoothed by digital manipulation, become metaphors for what we’ve lost: the human irregularities that once defined us.

By turning Facetune into an artistic language, Andrew reclaims beauty as something messy, vulnerable, and real. Her work reminds us that in the algorithmic age, the most radical thing we can be is imperfect.