The White Privilege And Racism Of Lensa’s Magic Avatars

And how the app made me “white”

Photo credit: Author’s collection — Lensa went so far as to make me, a Black woman, white

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few weeks, you must have come across lots of artistically designed selfies or portraits of your friends in their social media feeds.

I was curious about this new phenomenon and quickly found out that an app called Lensa could generate these well-designed selfies or what they refer to as “magic avatars”, at a reasonable cost. I immediately thought it was a great Christmas gift idea for members of my family.

Now, if you’ve read a few of my stories, you’ll know that I’m a Black woman married to a white man. We have two mixed-race children. Basically, in my household, we are Black, brown, and white, and Lensa definitely treated us differently based on the color of our skin — and not at all in a good way, for me as a Black woman. Let me tell you why.

I did a free 7-day trial with the app and brought a discounted $3.99 pack of 110 magic avatars each for my white husband, my mixed-race son, and one each for my mother and me who are Black.

So my white husband’s avatars turned out great. They actually resembled him. I offered to print out one in high quality for his Christmas gift and he couldn’t quite choose only one. Out of 110 magic avatars, 100 of…