The Unfiltered Truth About Beauty Bloggers

Tired of everyone else looking better than you? Then read on to learn how to navigate the world of selfie-editing apps.

- Joanna Taylor

Picture This...

It’s Sunday morning. You’re in bed, hungover, contemplating that McDonald’s delivery now that you’ve well and truly missed the spinning class you’d optimistically booked for 9am. Meanwhile, Instagram is full of bright-eyed, beauty blogging brunch-goers who presumably were also doing tequila shots at 2am. So why do they all look as if they’ve slept for eight hours and just finished a 90-minute vinyasa session – and how is it that they seem to look more oddly perfect with every passing post?

But look a little closer and you’ll spot the tell-tale signs of ‘tampering’: the perfect hyper-realism, the plastic-perfect skin, the blurry jaw and waistline. Could it be there’s more to beauty blogging than meets the eye?

Most influencers will insist the main reason for heavy editing is a consistent, well-curated, aspirational grid. What they don’t always shout about is: that’s what pays. More than half of us search Facebook and Instagram for our beauty inspiration* and, according to Forbes, anyone with a following of 100 000 can command at least USD$5 000 (about R70 000) per post, which can rise into the hundreds of thousands for those with more than a million followers.