Selfie-editing technologies (including in-phone editing tools, filters, and apps like Facetune) provide the ability digitally edit and “enhance” facial and body features in photos. This article extends a theorization of “the virtual” developing from earlier approaches in feminist sociology and digital media studies, to consider the implications of selfie-editing capacities for how young people navigate selfhood in contemporary visual cultures. We draw on qualitative data, including in-depth semi-structured interviews and participatory selfie-editing group workshops which used an innovative “smartphone live capture” method, where participants screen recorded on their smartphones and narrated how they edit selfies in real time to understand how bodies materialize through the everyday technologies of visual culture. We theorize that editing apps facilitate a “virtual gaze” that can create new ways of sensing embodiment, producing both intensified self-scrutiny and a seemingly increasingly plastic virtual and physical body, available for remaking according to intensifying demands for visual perfection.

中文翻译：

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收紧、过滤、擦除：虚拟体和可编辑的自我

自拍编辑技术（包括手机内编辑工具、滤镜和 Facetune 等应用程序）提供了对照片中的面部和身体特征进行数字编辑和“增强”的能力。本文扩展了从女权主义社会学和数字媒体研究的早期方法发展而来的“虚拟”理论，以考虑自拍编辑能力对年轻人如何在当代视觉文化中驾驭自我的影响。我们利用定性数据，包括深入的半结构化访谈和参与式自拍编辑小组研讨会，这些研讨会使用创新的“智能手机实时捕捉”方法，参与者在智能手机上进行屏幕录制，并讲述他们如何实时编辑自拍，以了解身体如何通过视觉文化的日常技术实现。我们推测，编辑应用程序促进了“虚拟凝视”，它可以创造新的感知体现方式，产生更强烈的自我审视和看似越来越可塑的虚拟和物理身体，可以根据对视觉完美的强烈需求进行重塑。