The Beauty Project (AKA, The Feel Ugly Project)
by August J. McLaughlin

Imagine a computer program where you could place your hands on the screen and immediately receive positive feedback: You are loving. You are a great friend. You are a wonderful painter, writer, actor, student or teacher.  You are strong and healthy and perfectly beautiful just the way you are.

Now imagine the opposite.

Sega and Japanese makeup giant, Shiseido have teamed up to create a new game for Nintendo DS called The Beauty Project, perhaps more suitably called the Feel Ugly Project. The game aims to “rate [women’s] looks and suggest repairs.” The partaker scans her face with the accompanying face scanner (tell me that doesn’t sound scary…) and receives judgment on its parameters, going so far as to have her hair follicles closely examined electronically (gross). Her face is then judged as cool, active, cute or feminine and allotted make-up tips toward improving her appearance. She is left with an image of her current face beside a photo of her face with suggested improvements.

Granted, the categories (cool, active, cute and feminine) are all positive.  But categorically judging our faces does little to promote well-being or positivity. Who wants to look at her face and say, “Gee, my face is athletic looking today!” My suspicion is that young girls who are already battling insecurities will be drawn to the game, seeking self enhancement and validation. She will not find either of these things here.

Sega spokeswoman Rei Sugiyama explains that “the user can have a variety of make-up tips for different occasions….find colors that are good on you but you never realized before.” What Sega is failing to recognize is how many women will look to the game for beauty tips, yet leave feeling judged and inadequate.

Curious whether others felt as I do about the potential dangers posed by this game, I asked Jessica Leidner, clinical therapist at Loma Linda Behavioral Medicine Center, her thoughts. “We must seriously question and challenge a ‘game’ which is training young women to literally transform their faces, flaws, and physical appearances to a prescribed societal ideal.” Excellent point.

Beauty is objective and should not be judged or manipulated through the guise of a game.  In a world already overrun with negative media influences and portrayals of beauty, the woman playing this game looks into her computer screen and watches as her face is dissected  and measured. (Blech.)

One of the top Google search headings reads: “Beauty Project: The Game You Should Buy for Your Girlfriend.” A note to you guys out there – buying your girlfriend a product that judges her face in this way is no more supportive than buying her a broom and mop for Valentine’s Day. Tell her she is beautiful for who she is, no “repairs” required.  Support her interests and abilities rather than what type of lipstick she should or shouldn’t wear. Yes, we want to feel beautiful, but that doesn’t come from having our faces analyzed in this way. A “game” designed for such critique is the last thing she or our world needs.

The Beauty Project will launch in November. Needless to say, it hasn’t made my Christmas list.

Sources: CNet News, Saga, Jessica Leidner, MA, MFTI

computers, gaming, nintendo ds, sega, shiseido, the beauty project Hide