Is Snapchat’s viral gender-swap filter problematic or just silly fun? | Arwa Mahdawi

I, too, wanted to see male-me, but it’s ironic that an app that encourages you to play with gender has such a binary view of it

You may remember Snapchat. The app used to be hugely popular and then suddenly became irrelevant. Thanks to its viral new gender-swapping filter, however, Snapchat is back. People are downloading the app in droves to see what they would look like as the opposite gender; even the (male) England Cricket team has got in on the action. (Honestly, if they all looked like that in real life, I would be the biggest cricket fan in the world.)

Anyway, I’ve always thought I would have made a very handsome man, so when I heard about the Snapchat filter I was quick to try it out. Well, “quick’” may not be the most accurate descriptor. Apparently, I am now “can’t-use-technology-years-old”; it took me an embarrassing amount of Googling and expletives to figure out how to download the gender-swapping function. After all that trouble I can’t tell you how upset I was to find out that male-me looks like a sex offender. An extremely disappointing result.

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from The Guardian http://bit.ly/2HkVrNN