Who Told You They Were Flaws? | Gretchen Andrew

We live in a time when even imperfection has become a marketable aesthetic.Self-acceptance is trending, but behind the slogans and affirmations lies a quieter truth: someone, somewhere, told us what to hate first.

Before you can love your “flaws,” you have to see who’s telling you they’re flaws in the first place.

Gretchen Andrew’s Facetune Portraits begins with that uncomfortable realization. Before you can love your “flaws,” you have to question who taught you to see them as flaws — and why.

Through the digital distortions of AI-generated beauty, Andrew exposes the invisible systems shaping our sense of self. By feeding AI tools like Facetune and beauty filters images of real women — Miss Nigeria, Miss Denmark, Miss Argentina — the artist forces the algorithm to reveal its coded bias. Despite their different origins, the software pushes every face toward the same narrow ideal: Western, hyper-sexualized, and impossibly thin.

It’s not just about vanity. It’s about power.Algorithms are trained on what we already value most — and what we choose to erase. When they define what’s “beautiful,” they also define what’s “wrong.” What begins as a swipe of a filter quickly becomes a cultural feedback loop, reinforcing beauty standards that were never ours to begin with.

Facetune Portraits resists that loop. It doesn’t correct; it confronts. The portraits reveal the mechanics of digital editing while preserving the humanity of the subjects. Their gazes remain steady — aware, reflective, and untamed by the software’s attempts to homogenize them.

This is what makes Andrew’s work political: it reclaims authorship over appearance. Her art doesn’t moralize against technology; it uses technology to show how deeply our identities are entwined with it. By playing within the language of the internet — selfies, filters, influencer aesthetics — Facetune Portraits makes visible what’s usually hidden: the quiet violence of optimization.

Now part of the Whitney Museum’s permanent collection, two works from Facetune Portraits mark an institutional recognition of that rebellion. The acquisition signals not only artistic validation but also a broader cultural shift — a willingness to see beauty as something built, questioned, and reclaimed.

To “love your flaws” is not enough. You must know where the definition of a flaw begins, whose gaze it serves, and what systems profit from your insecurity. Gretchen Andrew invites us to reimagine the algorithm — not as a mirror, but as a battleground where art, identity, and code collide.