The brainchild of best friends Jules and Gebs, @RavveBeauty is the Instagram account dedicated to showcasing and celebrating all that is disturbing, disarming and alluring when it comes to underground beauty. Doubled up contact lenses, iridescent face shimmer, obscure facial piercings, heads shaved to look like flowers in full bloom, unibrows, no brows, wiggly brows. Lending us their well-honed eye, here they pick their top beauty Instagrams of the month.

In this digital age, we are defined as a pixel in the eyes of the camera. Stand still, don’t move, snap and pray to the camera gods to record the beauty we desperately seek. Sometimes the pixels say we’re worthy. Sometimes the pixels betray us. Nevertheless, we’re at their mercy.  

Could we defend our pixel fixation as the art of looking at ourselves more closely? Like the impressionists painting small dots to bring to life the truth of an image in whole. In a way, we could even argue that Instagram’s square posts were probably intended to be each their own pixel that creates the fabric of a beautiful digital society.

This month, we are spotlighting ravvers who are using make-up to exaggerate the pixels that the camera sees, magnifying the pixels that the naked eye usually can’t detect.  If you squint, the pixels will blend together. But if you’re looking at it straight on, we figure it’s what the camera considers real beauty. Here we present the best reality distortions of the ‘gram. 

Optical illusions by Dain Yoon

Facial reconstruction by Mimi Choi

Surreal and funny AF by RJ Tulloch

Distorted and disturbing Sam Schavlev

Too real it’s unreal by Sara Ashlee Rich

Area 51 by Lucia Perešová

Glitch by Rowi Singh

Barbie Pixel by Molly Bee

Pixel hair by Hairart X-presion

Laser tag by Isamaya Ffrench

3D contouring by Luca Luce

Playing with @johwska’s filter Juliette Marounek

Pixelation IRL: Ezra Miller by Mimi Choi