CLOSER NEWS REPORT
With one in four of us refusing to upload a selfie without a filter, influencer and former EastEnders star Melissa Suffield is working with Closer to campaign for declarations of filter use on social media to be mandatory. Here, one filter fan reveals how they had a dangerous effect on her confidence…
Facing her camera, Louanna Jasmin stares into the lens and gives her best pout. Her hair and make-up are flawless but there’s still one final step she needs to complete before she can hit “post”. Tapping her screen until her favourite filter appears, the 30-year-old model from Manchester watches in awe as her lips become fuller, her eyes bigger and her nose slimmer.
But what could be seen as harmless fun has resulted in Louanna spending more than £20,000 on procedures to become that filtered version of herself. She says, “I started using face and body-altering filters to make my photos look more like those of my favourite celebs. But after using them for a while, I became obsessed with the idea of looking more like my filtered images.”
OBSESSED
And Louanna isn’t the only one feeling pressured into having the “perfect” look. A recent poll of over 2,000 people by OriGym revealed that 25 per cent of us won’t upload a selfie without a filter and a whopping 40 per cent of 16–25-year-olds want to change their real-life appearance to look like their filtered images.
Louanna first began experimenting with filters when she was 14. She says, “As with most teenage girls, I wanted to look ‘perfect’ like the models, influencers and stars I followed on social media. It didn’t occur to me at the time that many of the images I pored over were heavily altered – which definitely made my many insecurities worse.
“And then, when I discovered filters, I became addicted to smoothing my skin, making my eyes sparkle and my lips fuller. The filters gave me a false sense of confidence. I’d have no problem with posting a photo of myself and felt chuffed when the compliments started rolling in. But whenever someone tagged me in an unfiltered photo, I wouldn’t like what I saw and my confidence would plummet again. It got so bad that I couldn’t post a photo without adding a filter. I’d use FaceApp, Facetune, Snapchat and TikTok filters which enhanced my facial structure, and I soon became obsessed with wanting to look like that in real life.”
So, in 2018, aged 25, Louanna underwent her first cosmetic procedure. She recalls, “I slimmed down my nose in photos with a filter and showed the image to a plastic surgeon. He told me that wasn’t realistic if I wanted to be able to breathe! I still went through with it, although not quite to the extreme that I’d wanted.”
The procedure cost Louanna £5,000 and was the start of her physical transformation. She says, “One filter whitened my te
