TikTok's Hooked-Nose Filter Bashed for Insensitivity: 'Made Me Feel Ugly'

A discomfiting TikTok filter has shown users what they look like with a hooked nose, prompting a wave of controversy online.

The filter gives users a large nose with a prominent bridge, a feature historically associated with people of Jewish, Middle Eastern, South Asian and Native American descent. The "Jewish nose" has been a persistent element of antisemitic stereotypes since the 13th century, according to the Media Diversity Institute, and was ubiquitous in Nazi propaganda during the 1930s.

Today, a TikTok trend features participants showing their faces with a filter-generated hooked nose, then switching to their actual noses—typically much smaller and flatter. Many of these videos are accompanied by a caption describing a "confidence boost" from the filter.

Other TikTok users are blasting the trend for racial insensitivity.

"You guys are using this filter for a 'confidence booster' not realizing [you're] mocking African/Middle Eastern and [Jewish] noses, just to feel better about yourself," said a user named Jenna in a video with 2.1 million views on October 22.

Another woman danced erratically in a video from October 19 with the caption, "Hitler watching people do this trend bashing ethnic noses to show off their tiny white Western one."

"This filter made me feel f****** ugly for what?" asked user Mona, who flaunted her own bridged nose in a clip with 1 million views on October 19. "Please, big ethnic noses are hot."

Other TikTokers have lashed back at the trend with images of admired film stars, such as Jewish actors Adrien Brody and Barbra Streisand, who have aquiline noses.

Streisand told Playboy Magazine in 1977 that she was often pressured to acquire a nose job in her youth, but she refused.

"It was like a fad, all the Jewish girls having their noses done every week, [...] taking perfectly good noses and whittling them down to nothing," she said. "The first thing someone would have done would be to cut my bump off. But I love my bump, I wouldn't cut my bump off."

Research has linked the use of social media filters and photo editing to body dissatisfaction. In a 2020 study, Australian researchers at Flinders University found that taking and editing a selfie increased negative mood and facial dissatisfaction in young women, with the extent of editing predicting the degree of unhappiness with how they looked in real life.

People who judge their actual faces and bodies against filters are also more likely to consider surgically changing their appearances. A 2019 study in JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery found that users of certain social media and photo editing applications were more accepting of cosmetic surgery.

Along with heightening self-objectification and dysmorphia, filters have gained notoriety in the past for emphasizing Eurocentric beauty standards by smoothing and lightening the skin, slimming the face, shrinking the nose and enlarging the eyes.

TikTok has since deleted its hooked-nose filter. Newsweek reached out to the platform for comment.