How to participate in the 'Barbie, Bratz, or Fairy' challenge using TikTok's shapeshifting effect

• A TikTok trend shows users categorizing themselves as Barbies, Bratz, or fairies.
• Using TikTok's shapeshifting effect, faces can morphe into one of those characters.
• Other shapeshifting trends involving "Glee" or Marvel characters have also become popular on TikTok.

One of the biggest TikTok trends of the moment involves using the app's shapeshifting effect to determine whether or not you most closely resemble a Barbie, a Bratz doll, or a fairy (from the Winx franchise, to be more specific).

The shapeshifting effect became available in the United States in April, as Elite Daily reported. Per Elite Daily, it was first available in some parts of Europe and Asia as early as September 2020, but its American debut has brought about a new bout of virality and challenges.

The effect's function is simple: you upload a photo, and the effect morphs your face into it. Things become a bit more complicated when you upload a photo of a group of people. Then, the effect morphs your face into one of the people or characters on-screen, but until it actually happens, you won't know which.

It's unclear exactly how the effect works, but the jokes and trends surrounding it are predicated on the idea that it morphs based on facial similarities. Insider has reached out to a representative for the app. TikTok users have used the effect for Marvel-related challenges ("Which Avenger are you?") as well as "Glee" ones, in which people cry after morphing into Matthew Morrison.

As Vox's Rebecca Jennings wrote in The Goods newsletter, the comedy - and "specific kind of terror" - of the shapeshifting effect is that it is, in many cases, hilariously inaccurate. An entire subgenre of these videos shows actors morphing into completely different cast members of shows that they've actually been on, rather than the characters they played.

The "Barbie, Bratz, or fairy" use of the effect is the latest to flood the platform.

To participate in the trend, it's easiest to grab a screenshot of one of the composite images - with one Barbie, one Bratz character, and one Winx fairy - that others have been using in their videos. Search for the shapeshifting effect, upload the image, and then film the morph.

It's not clear how the trend started, and people are participating in it using multiple different audios. Even without the incorporation of the shapeshifting effect, the trend of categorizing yourself as "Barbie, Bratz, fairy" has been around on TikTok since March at the latest. The #bratzbarbiefairy hashtag has over 10.6 million views.

While the inner mechanisms of the effect are unclear, it doesn't appear to select faces at random, as shown through anecdotal testing. I tested it myself using a photo of characters from the video game "Fire Emblem: Three Houses" and landed on the same exact character (Petra, for what it's worth) every single time, no matter how many times I closed out of my video draft and opened a new one. Jennings reported similar findings as well through personal testing.

Though it's all in good fun, challenges like this one play off the desire to categorize ourselves online in arbitrary ways. The shapeshifting effect is just a novel manifestation of the same phenomena that drive people to participate in quizzes about their personality or which "Sex and the City" character they are. Now, instead of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, or Miranda, this trend can help you find out whether you're a Barbie, Bratz doll, or fairy.