This essay explores the use of digital filters in modifying gender facial traits, examining two distinct case studies to highlight different filtering operations and relative effects. The first case study focuses on gender-swap apps which allow users to transform their digital image to appear as the opposite gender. To this purpose, filters are used to break up and exaggerate typical masculine or feminine traits, with the effect to highlight both the app’s functionality and the conventional nature of gender as a sociocultural construct. This ludic operation on gender traits results in an original reconfiguration of (especially lgbtq ) users’ images and online identities, partially aligning with and potentially extending their real-world gender performativity. The second case study investigates the smoothing of gender-facial traits of some Disney villains. Here, the filtering diminishes the aesthetic and cultural impact of these iconic characters and of their gender performance, reshaping them into heteronormative and conventional narrative frameworks.