Growing up, the only Photoshop we had to watch out for was on the cover of magazines. Airbrushed models and picture-perfect celebrities stood front and centre on news agency shelves, and while it did a number on our body image, it was easier to convince ourselves that what we were seeing was not real.
Kids these days have it much harder. With editing apps like Facetune and FaceApp being readily accessible to even the most common of folk, every Tom, Dick and Harry is making themselves look unreal on social media — literally.
A little nip here and a tuck there and suddenly you struggle to recognise yourself. A cinched waist and blemishes smoothed out, and no one is the wiser.
But what happens when the person editing your photos isn't you... but your mum? The same mum who is meant to see you as nothing less than perfect.
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Sabrina Coleman, a 22-year-old content creator from Pennsylvania, United States, has a mum who enjoys sharing photos of her online. However, what makes this ordinary activity unconventional is that she edits her daughter to make her look thinner.
Posting a video to TikTok, Sabrina says she's the "child of a Facetune mum" and shows just how drastic the edits are. In almost all of the pictures, Sabrina's face is slimmed down and her skin is made to look brighter.
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♬ original sound - Sabrina
"(My mum) loves her photoshoots, she loves Instagram and she has hundreds of thousands of pictures in her camera roll but the issue is, she Facetunes literally every single one of her pictures," said Sabrina.
"And you know what? I think that's fine. You do you, but the issue is, she Facetunes the crap out of me and any pictures that I'm in."
The most dramatic change of all was Sabrina's mum manipulated her arms to look thinner.
@overdramaticperson Replying to @Call Her Oppa ♬ original sound - Sabrina
"My weight has fluctuated a lot over the past few years and I think this was close to my heaviest so I don't think my mum was used to seeing me at that size," she said in another video which garnered over a million views.
"My arm has never been that skinny. And I know how my mum is so I don't take it personally or get offended, but I just think it's crazy to edit other people like that.
"You wanna Facetune yourself, by all means, go ahead, you do you. But to edit someone else — and by edit I mean like fully change what someone actually looks like — I just think is kinda weird behaviour."
After witnessing Sabrina's mum's editing skills, people flocked to the comments with a surprising remark. They were asking if Sabrina's mum could edit their photos as well.
"I honestly wish my mum was more like this because some of the pics she has posted of me on Facebook are tragic," wrote one user, who had the highest liked comment.
Another said: "I wish my mum did this. She always posts my worst photos."
However, Sabrina says FaceTune is not the answer, as it doesn't make her like a photo any more or less.
"I got a lot of comments from people saying, 'Oh, this is such a blessing I wish my mum did this, she posts the worst pictures of me', and I totally get that, I don't like it when my mum posts bad pictures of me too. But the thing is, the editing doesn't make the picture better or make me like a picture more," she said.
"I still don't think I look good (in the edited photos), and slimming my face down and my arm down doesn't make me like it more."
Amidst the sea of people wishing their own mum edited their photos before sharing them online, were people who told Sabrina that her feelings were valid.
"I'm sorry, you deserve better. I hope you're able to grow and heal," wrote one user, to which Sabrina responded, "The growing never stops but the healing (in this aspect at least) has been done years ago."
Feature Image: TikTok @overdramaticperson.
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