# Meitu beauty-app selfie

> Self-portraits taken with a phone's front camera (in the early 2010s, also a selfie compact) and run through a beauty app such as Meitu's, which edits the face itself: skin smoothed, lightened and flushed pink, dark circles and blemishes erased, eyes enlarged and brightened, jaw and chin narrowed. The light is bright and nearly shadowless, from a window, a screen or now and then a ring light; the camera is held close and a little above; colour is pale and pastel with a soft glow, often finished with stickers, frames and the app's watermark, and posted to a feed.

- Period: 2008–present
- Where it began: Meitu, founded in 2008 in Xiamen
- Kind: Digital & social
- Also called: Beauty-camera selfie, Beauty-filter selfie, Meiyan look (美颜, 'beautify the face'), Meitu look
- Page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/meitu-beauty-selfie/

## How the look is made

- Turn the camera on yourself, with a phone's front camera or a compact's swivelling screen, and hold it close and a little above eye level, so the face fills the frame and the chin narrows.
- Face a window, a bright screen or a ring light so the light falls from the front and leaves almost no shadow, then push the exposure bright.
- Edit the face, not only the frame, as far as the sitter chooses: smooth and even the skin, remove dark circles and blemishes, enlarge and brighten the eyes, slim the jaw and chin.
- Grade soft and pastel: a glow over the highlights, pale pink, lilac and sky-blue colour in the background and clothes, flushed cheeks and lips, and no grain, noise or other trace of the camera; keep the sitter's own skin tone rather than lightening it.
- Finish with stickers, a frame or a caption, and post the picture to a feed in a tall or square frame; found pictures often carry the app's watermark, but never add a real app's watermark or logo to a new or generated picture.

## How it is lit

- Bright frontal window light or open shade, the face turned to the light so that shadows almost vanish.
- Now and then a ring light around the phone, or the glow of a screen, for evening selfies and livestreams, leaving ring-shaped catchlights.
- The app's or camera's beauty mode then lifts the exposure and softens whatever shadow is left on the face.

### The rendered set-up

A bright window straight in front, the face turned into it so the shadows almost vanish, the phone held close and a little above. Rendered in Blender Cycles on a synthetic clay figure or still life, with the lights exactly where the plan on the page puts them.

### A light plan from its choices (schematic)

- Key: a window, about 25° to the camera’s left, soft.
- Fill: a softbox, about 25° to the camera’s right, high, soft.
- Background light: a softbox, from behind the subject, soft.

## Camera settings

21–32 mm · f/2–f/2.8 · 1/125–1/30 s · ISO 50–400 (on phone), documented. Front cameras of about 28–32 mm equivalent at f/2.0–2.2 (iPhone 6s 31 mm f/2.2; Meitu phones f/2.0) and Casio's TR100 selfie compact at 21 mm f/2.8, held at arm's length; indoor exposures near 1/30 s at ISO 200 (specimen EXIF).

## Directing people

Self-directed at arm's length: shoulders square or slightly turned, head tilted, chin dipped and eyes looking up into a lens held a little above; a small closed smile, a slight pout or wide eyes; a hand at the cheek or a V sign; the face turned to the light. Friends squeeze in cheek to cheek for group selfies.

## Styling

Everyday clothes, often in soft pinks and pastels, with the sitter's own groomed hair and make-up (even skin, defined eyes, glossy lips), sometimes a bolder look or a wig; a few touches straightened before the shot, and the room, café or street behind left as it is and washed out to white.

## Before you shoot it

These are real people's faces, many of them young women and teenagers, and the look has been criticised for narrowing beauty to one template: lighter skin, big eyes with double eyelids, a slim pointed chin and a narrow, high-bridged nose, features critics read as Eurocentric. Asked in 2021 whether Meitu Xiuxiu was 'unifying everyone's aesthetics', Meitu's founder Wu Xinhong conceded that there may once have been such a standard, the so-called internet-celebrity face, while saying the app now makes beauty 'more open and inclusive'; people have taken Meitu-edited photos to plastic surgeons, and beauty filters have been linked to body dysmorphic disorder; one BeautyPlus user, praising its new skin-tone options, wrote: 'Prior I'd get my bubbly eyes and look 5 shades lighter in the process'. Never lighten skin or reshape features by default: retouch every skin tone on its own terms and let the sitter decide what changes. Generate adults only, never a lookalike of a real person or influencer, never run someone else's photo through these tools without consent, and label beautified and generated images as edited or AI-generated rather than presenting them as a real person's unedited selfie or livestream. Meitu, BeautyCam and BeautyPlus are a company's trademarks, not free style labels.

## Photographs

- MikuMarmalade, BeautyPlus app filter, 2017. CC BY 2.0, via Flickr. Shown on the page: https://www.flickr.com/photos/52244076@N06/33139908834
- Sebastian Schack (iSchack), #Meitu #Gruppenzwang, 2017, on Flickr (labelled CC BY 2.0 there; shown here as a link only). In copyright, linked: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ischack/32032515630/
- ChenTim0602, 紀艾希 Ring, 2017. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr and Wikimedia Commons. Shown on the page: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E7%B4%80%E8%89%BE%E5%B8%8C_Ring.jpg

## Sources

- Margaret Hillenbrand and Xuenan Cao, 'Facial AI: Cosmetic Surgery in China and the Death of Internets Everywhere', Grey Room 103 (Spring 2026), pp. 102–116, https://doi.org/10.1162/GREY.a.368, read at https://www.greyroom.org/media/files/hillenbrand-cao.pdf (wanghonglian defined by Baidu Baike in 2017 as a standardised face with a pointed chin, European double eyelids and a high-bridged nose; Meitu Xiuxiu launched October 2008, one-tap filters and skin whitening, 'old-school Hollywood glamour available via a single button'; Meitu's mobile app of 2011 and its face slimming, jaw narrowing and eye enlargement; the authors' reading of Wu Xinhong's 2021 Daily Economic News interview; Instagram face filters, 16 May 2017)
- Liu Chunshan and Han Yang, 'Meitu xiuxiu zai tongyi dajia de shenmei? Meitu chuangshiren Wu Xinhong: "Wanghonglian" yijing jinhua cheng "qianren qianmian"', Daily Economic News (Meiri jingji xinwen), 31 August 2021: https://www.nbd.com.cn/articles/2021-08-31/1898311.html (asked whether Meitu Xiuxiu was unifying everyone's aesthetic standards, Wu Xinhong said such a standard, the wanghong face, may once have existed, and that the app now makes aesthetics more open and inclusive)
- Meitu, company introduction and history: https://www.meitu.com/hk/introduction (founded 2008; founder, chairman and CEO Wu Xinhong; MT Lab 2010; BeautyCam and BeautyPlus launched 2013; listed in Hong Kong 2016)
- Meitu, 'Meitu Internationalization in 2018: AirBrush and BeautyPlus Profitable, Overseas Users of the Meitu App Increased Drastically', press release, 25 December 2018: https://www.meitu.com/en/media/266 (the Meitu app 'has also become popular in the Southeast Asian, Middle Eastern, and Mongolian markets'; monthly active users up 53% in Indonesia, 44% in Vietnam and 9% in Thailand; BeautyPlus 'the overseas version of BeautyCam'; a company's own figures)
- MeituPic, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeituPic (Meitu Xiu Xiu, 美图秀秀; its PC version created in 2008 by Wu Xinhong; its mobile version one of the first must-have mobile apps in China in 2013; automatic retouch 'lightening the skin tone, brightening the eyes'; slimming and frames; mostly used in mainland China, popular in Hong Kong and Taiwan)
- Meitu, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meitu (established 2008, headquartered in Xiamen, Fujian; Meitu-edited photos taken to plastic surgeons as a model; cites Jiayang Fan, 'China's Selfie Obsession', The New Yorker, December 2017, not read directly)
- The World staff, 'Is one selfie app company changing beauty standards in China?', PRI's The World, 28 December 2017: https://www.wgbh.org/news/2017-12-28/is-one-selfie-app-company-changing-beauty-standards-in-china (after Jiayang Fan in The New Yorker: more than half of the selfies uploaded on Chinese social media believed edited with one company's apps; the look named wang hong lian; users brighten their eyes and sharpen their chin; plastic surgery to achieve the look)
- Selfie culture on Chinese social media, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selfie_culture_on_Chinese_social_media (MeituKiss of May 2013 with an automated beauty enhancement feature and a selfie button, citing 36Kr, 30 April 2013; BeautyCam (美颜相机) 138 million installations; mainstream filters seek 'smooth and flawless skin, slim chins and shiny big eyes', dark circles and wrinkles eliminated; Vivo's selfie phones; the August 2019 livestream whose filter failed)
- Beauty filter, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty_filter (purikura of 1995 as forerunner; the iPhone 4 of 2010, the first iPhone with a front camera, and the rise in selfies; Snapchat's lenses, September 2015; effects include smoothing skin, slimming the face, enlarging the eyes and narrowing the nose; filters highlight Eurocentric features; linked to body dysmorphic disorder; the retouching applied by TikTok's default front camera in 2021; TikTok's Bold Glamour filter, March 2023)
- Purikura, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purikura (Print Club introduced by Sega and Atlus in February 1995; brightening pictures, making the eyes sparkle, blurring blemishes; backdrops, borders, decorations and text)
- A. W. Ohlheiser, 'TikTok changed the shape of some people's faces without asking', MIT Technology Review, 10 June 2021: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/06/10/1026074/tiktok-mandatory-beauty-filter-bug/ (late May 2021, a slimmer jaw and possibly softer skin in TikTok's camera on Android, which TikTok called an issue that had been resolved; a Douyin user who still saw her face adjusted with the beauty mode and filters turned off; in China and some other places some apps add a subtle beauty filter by default)
- 'Casio Exilim EX-TR150', Photography Blog, 16 May 2012, from Casio's press release of 16 March 2012: https://www.photographyblog.com/news/casio_exilim_ex-tr150 (the TR100's variable frame for self-portraits kept; new Make-up mode that 'applies effects to smooth skin and soften facial shadows caused by harsh light')
- 'Casio EX-TR10 & EX-TR15', Photography Blog, 12 July 2013, from Casio's press release of 19 June 2013: https://www.photographyblog.com/news/casio_ex_tr10_ex_tr15 (360° rotating frame, 270° rotating display, a self-portrait shutter button on the frame; 12 selectable make-up levels)
- ansel, '貴在「Emotional Value」︰Casio 設計師談 TR50 自拍神器', DCFever, 9 November 2014: https://www.dcfever.com/news/readnews.php?id=11875 (the first TR100 of 2011 made its name in Hong Kong, then was taken up by women users in mainland China and Taiwan and called the 'selfie wonder-tool', zipai shenqi, which Casio had not foreseen)
- Huang Longzhong, '拜访 CASIO 日本总部：卡片机是否走向消亡？', iFanr, 3 September 2013: https://www.ifanr.com/340144 (Casio launched the TR series in 2011; in China its self-portrait function was discovered by women users and became the most popular)
- 美顏 (měiyán), Wiktionary: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/美顏 (simplified 美颜; 'beautiful or beautified face', and as a verb, to beautify one's face)
- Runhua Zhao, 'Meitu faces up to natural look', TechNode, 7 November 2018: https://technode.com/2018/11/07/meitu-faces-up-to-natural-look/ (the wanghong look of 'very big eyes, very thin face'; users shifting to a more natural standard; Meitu Xiuxiu and BeautyCam; monthly active users 415.8 million at the end of 2017)
- Catherine Lai, 'Popular Chinese Selfie App Meitu Prompts Privacy Fears', Hong Kong Free Press, 22 January 2017, republished by Global Voices, 24 January 2017: https://globalvoices.org/2017/01/24/popular-chinese-selfie-app-meitu-prompts-privacy-fears/ (the app, launched in 2008, took off in the West after people shared photographs transformed into anime-like images)
- MikuMarmalade, 'BeautyPlus app filter~ …', Flickr, 11 April 2017: https://www.flickr.com/photos/52244076@N06/33139908834 (a user's praise of BeautyPlus's diverse skin-tone filters, and of getting 'bubbly eyes' and looking '5 shades lighter' with the filters before them)
- Apple iPhone 6s full specifications, GSMArena: https://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone_6s-7242.php (selfie camera 5 MP, f/2.2, 31 mm equivalent)
- Apple iPhone 7 full specifications, GSMArena: https://www.gsmarena.com/apple_iphone_7-8064.php (selfie camera 7 MP, f/2.2, 32 mm equivalent)
- 美圖手機 2 (Meitu 2) specifications, SOGI: https://www.sogi.com.tw/products/meitu_2/11078 (launched August 2014; 13 MP front and rear cameras, F2.0 and 28 mm wide-angle given for the dual-camera lens, front fill light)
- Casio Exilim Tryx EX-TR100 review, Amateur Photographer, 9 July 2011: https://amateurphotographer.com/review/casio-exilim-tryx-ex-tr100 ('a fixed 21mm (35mm equivalent) f/2.8' lens, 1/2.3-inch 12.1 MP sensor, ISO 100–3200)
- 紀艾希 Ring, ChenTim0602, Wikimedia Commons (EXIF): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E7%B4%80%E8%89%BE%E5%B8%8C_Ring.jpg (Meitu 2 at 3.5 mm, f/2.0, 1/30 s, ISO 200)

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From Lumogeny (https://lumogeny.com/), a service of Van Riel Online Services. The shoot sheet for your own camera, lenses and lights is on the page: https://lumogeny.com/styles/meitu-beauty-selfie/#sheet