When did social media become a stage for blasting photo after photo of your own face? I know I sound all Clint Eastwood “Get Off My Lawn” right now, but I can’t count how many times I’ve clicked into someone’s Instagram account only to see an endless stream of selfies — the endless feed of heads on the feed look like a museum of narcissism. In Asia, the need to take and post selfies online is even more eyeroll-inducing, because it usually comes with a minor dose of casual racism: quite a few Asian women consider “light skin” as the ideal skin tone, and dark skin is associated with ugliness. So of course, Asian electronic manufacturers are coming out with products that cater to Asian women’s need to appear as white as possible. Quartz has an interesting (and sad) story of women in China paying up to US$1,000 for a Casio “magic selfie” camera that “slims” the face and “lightens”the skin tone of the subject. The gadget’s official nickname is “zipai shenqi,” which is Chinese for “Godly tool for selfies.”  Seriously. In a video that accompanies the Quartz piece, various Chinese women express their love of the camera, saying vapid things like “yeah, it’s true that you can edit a selfie with apps and software, but this camera does it automatically.”

from Forbes – Tech http://ift.tt/1pnM57K
via IFTTT