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A new application removes makeup from women. Of course, it was created by a man with a lot of free time

o TWITTER facebook Ashot Gabrelyanov, life, make-up, makeapp, Woman, application, Makeup, sexism

A new makeup application has caused controversy on the internet in recent days, as its main function is to remove makeup from a woman's photo to reveal how she would be depicted without it.

The application is called MakeApp, costs 99 cents and uses artificial intelligence to remove makeup from photos and videos. And yes, of course the creator is a man who listens to the name Ashot Gabrelyanov.

Gabrelyanov's idea is based on the broader, completely sexist, prevailing view among men worldwide that women want to use make-up and mascara to cover their "real" face of the opposite sex. As Elle Australia had suggested, a YouGov survey since 2017 had revealed that an incredible percentage of men, 63% to be exact, firmly believe that women wear makeup to "trick them".

Although the MakeApp app does not use this ad line, many people on social media wonder why there should be such an app in general.

Jenna Rosenstein, chief beauty editor at Harper's Bazaar, is wary of her application and intentions.

"While I think the technology it uses is cool enough, I do not like the idea of ​​an app that exists just to strip women of their makeup without their consent," she told HuffPost US.

"Makeup is mostly a tool to take care of our identity and image - I, in particular, would never upload a selfie on the internet without my armor consisting of red lipstick and black eyeliner," adds Rosenstein. "Stealing a woman's choice to wear - or not - complete makeup on her face is problematic as an idea. We have to ask ourselves: what exactly is the purpose of this application, and what is the corresponding one for men?».

Gabrelyanov, for his part, said critics had misunderstood his application.

"I want to emphasize that this product was not intended to be half-hearted," he told HuffPost US. "We created MakeApp as a fun experiment and released it a few months ago and, unfortunately, its media coverage focused only on the app's makeup removal feature and they described us as a group of" tech bros "trying to hurt the women, which could not be further from reality ", he wrote in his letter, adding that the company also has women in the team that created the application.

Another problem with MakeApp, as its users mentioned, is how the application quite lightens the color of women's skin, when removing makeup.

Gabrelyanov claims that the application does not do such a thing - despite the fact that there are dozens of photos that show how it does.

"MakeApp does not lighten the color of the skin. "We have not received any messages or comments from our users describing this damage," he said. "Our neural network has been trained on a set of data by people of different skin colors and nationalities."

In practice, the app does not remove makeup from women's faces, but uses an algorithm to guess what the person in the photo or video would look like without makeup. That in order to do that, adds wrinkles and skin lesions in the face of each woman, assuming that every woman is so in reality, is objectively outrageous. For Gabrelyanov, however, it is simply something we "hope to correct."

A post shared by Ashot Gabrelyanov (@gabrelyanov) on Aug 5, 2017 at 11:26 pm PDT

The whole outrage with MakeApp, led to some more revelations that go beyond the application itself. Many news sites suggested that Gabrelyanov was once a prominent figure in the Russian media. Business Insider described him as "propagandist in favor of RussiaHe stressed that in 2013 the Moscow Times had published an article, according to which the creator of MakeApp and his father were the heads of the media network LifeNews, which had close ties with the Kremlin. In 2015 a text by Mashable called Gabrelyanov "pro-Putin media darling(Commonly, a Putin supporter adored by the Russian media).

The fact that Gabrelyanov's treatment of media opinion for its implementation is very similar to that used by Trump towards the media does not help much with any excuses he makes as counter-arguments to support the usefulness of MakeApp. Which does not exist.

 

Source: HuffPost