In this chapter, we investigate how a face is not a singular, invariable object, but may take on a variety of forms, and how new media has especially created new venues for the moldings of faces. We suggest that faces should be viewed in plural in order to emphasize the many different facial displays a single person make use of, and how this ‘pool of faces’ carries sociocultural meaning. While the past decades of swift technological development may seem to have diminished the role of face to face contact, the many new media has – on the contrary – established multiple new and innovative arenas for the face the be put into action.
Based on an ethnographic study of Danish teenagers’ use of SnapChat we demonstrate how the face is used as a central medium for interaction with peers. Through the analysis of visual SnapChat messages we investigate how SnapChat requires the sender to put an ‘ugly’ face forward. Especially the teenage girls engage in manipulating their faces into hideous expressions. However, this type of interaction is not random facial displays, but follow an ‘aesthetics of ugliness’. This aesthetics involve specific ways of looking ugly and is primarily performed by girls who have already secured their popular status on the heterosexual marketplace in the broad context of the school. Thus SnapChat functions both as a challenge to beauty norms of ‘flawless faces’ and as a reinscription of these same norms by further manifesting the exclusive status of the popular girl