Bela Curcio didn’t ever expect to look like his dad. Curcio’s father—a burly Italian man from Queens, New York, with broad shoulders and a furry mustache—was “peak masculinity,” he says. Curcio, on the other hand, was a self-described awkward teenager who was only playing around with the popular photo-editing software FaceApp as a way to test the waters. In 2022, Curcio was on the fence about whether or not he wanted to begin his physical transition as a transgender man. Through a few filters and light editing, he was able to see himself actualized on the screen of his phone.
“It made me cry,” Curcio explains, admitting that the resemblance between him and his father was uncanny. The longer Curcio takes testosterone as a form of hormone replacement therapy in his medical transition, the more he thinks the resemblance grows between him and the male relatives in his family. “I was thinking, ‘This would be my reality if I had been born as his son.’ That just sent me into a spiral of, ‘Wow, I am his son,'” he says.
The photos Curcio took at the start of his transition are just the tip of the iceberg, he tells me. For Curcio and countless other transgender youth in America, a form of gender-affirming care is now in the palms of their hands with the availability of artificial intelligence–based filters and apps. At the press of a button, users can instantly toggle between presenting as male or female, with AI helping to enhance jawlines, add facial hair, soften cheeks, or lengthen hair. FaceApp, available on iOS and Android app stores, is one of the more common apps trans men and women use. As gender-affirming care continues to be overwhelmingly challenged in the United States, according to the Trans Legislation Tracker, it’s more important than ever to keep these tools up and running.
Since launching in 2017, the tech, along with most other AI-powered tools, has only gotten stronger. Users can now select what parts of their unfiltered faces they’d like to see altered. Curcio tells me he used the masking tool in lieu of the standard gender-swap filter because it’s more realistic: “I wanted to know what I would actually look like. The reality is I’m not a gym bro. I’m not a protein shake person or someone who’s trying to beef up. I’d rather look like Troye Sivan.”
