Woman Shocked After Hair Salon Shares Her Photo: ‘Not My Face’

A woman who allowed a new hair salon to take photos of her for their social media after getting a haircut couldn’t believe what she saw when the pictures were uploaded.

Tess Glimmerveen, 29, lives in Amsterdam, and recently tried new hair salon, Holo, after coming across their social media and deciding the haircuts looked impressive.

However, she did notice the women in the photos, as she described it to Newsweek, “were far more glamorous than I am.”

Glimmerveen went ahead with the appointment, and was impressed with her hairdresser, who “really understood my vision,” and was “very happy with the final cut.”

She asked them to take photos so she could send them to her girlfriend, while another staff member asked permission to take photos for the salon’s social media, which Glimmerveen agreed to.

However, what happened next led Glimmerveen to go viral on TikTok after she posted the story to her account @tessglimm on September 12, which has been viewed over 500,000 times.

It first showed her normal photos, which she had taken for her girlfriend, and said they were “not my most photogenic picture ever”—and in the next slide, joked: “I guess they agreed.”

Because the version of Glimmerveen that was shared to Holo Salon’s Instagram was not exactly Glimmerveen—it had clearly been put through a filter.

Newsweek has contacted Holo Salon for comment over email and Instagram.

“The picture kind of looked like me but I [didn’t] clock it straight away. I actually had to laugh out loud when I realized it was my picture, but then FaceTuned,” she told Newsweek.

She later commented on Holo Salon’s Instagram post declaring it was “not my face,” and soon after, Holo sent Glimmerveen an apology and removed the post.

The apology was shown in a TikTok video update by Glimmerveen, showing a text conversation where the salon wrote: “Hello, I just saw your comment and wanted to apologize for using a filter on your photo. It was done by the marketing team. The post is deleted. I’m truly sorry for any inconvenience caused.”

Meanwhile, Glimmerveen thought the photo situation was “hilarious” and shared it with friends, but on TikTok it “really blew up.”

Hundreds of TikTok users wrote in the comments section on Glimmerveen’s video, defending her natural looks and criticizing the use of filters, with one user writing: “Bro this would send me? You are so beautiful! This is so rude.”

“Nah I’d cry,” another user commented, while another called it “very shady.”

“You were stunning without it,” another TikTok user assured her, with another adding: “You are absolutely stunning, why on earth would they think that was ok?”

Glimmerveen told Newsweek she was touched by the “sweet and kind” responses, admitting she was “surprised that so many people responded the way they did.”

She added that she has “no hard feelings towards” the salon and felt “a bit bad for them. They were nice people and I am still happy with my haircut.”

She noted, however, “I can understand some people feel like there’s a lot of pressure to portray a perfect image. And it feels very easy to tweak a few things before posting a photo. Especially when a salon like that wants to exude a little bit more glamour than I was giving.”

Glimmerveen continued: “I am confident in my own skin but even I felt a bit weird when I saw the filters and adjustments on my photo. I don’t look like that in real life, but should I? That is kind of sad, and I don’t let it get to me. But I can see that other people do feel like they have to change their appearance on social media to look like everyone else.”

An estimated 5.07 billion people are believed to use some form of social media, according to data from Statista. Younger users are most likely to use TikTok, with 36 percent of global users aged between 18 and 24.

Facebook remains the biggest social media site globally, with over 3 billion monthly users, while Instagram had 2 billion monthly users in April 2024. Meanwhile, the rise of influencers, who become a form of celebrity on social media, has created a new industry. In 2021, the global influencer marketing market value was $21.1 billion.

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