A Chinese woman was allegedly forced to take off her heavy makeup after facial recognition scanners at an airport failed to confirm her identity.

A short clip showing a young woman using wet wipes to clean her face of makeup while being scolded by airport staff went viral on Chinese social media last week, sparking all sorts of humorous comments.

According to the boarding pass shown in the video next to the woman’s ID, the video was shot in September of last year, at Shanghai Airport, but only recently attracted attention online. During the short clip, the woman holding the camera (presumably an airport official), scolds the young girl, telling her that she needs to wipe off all the makeup until she looks like the picture on her identification document.

“Wipe everything off until you look like your passport photo. Why would you do your makeup like that? You are asking for trouble,” the voice behind the camera says.

It’s unclear whether the woman eventually passed the airport’s facial recognition scan, but her ordeal did inspire humorous comments on social media.

“It’s not like she was able to walk around with a filter on in real life, right?” one person asked.

Others took pity on the young woman, saying that she already looked embarrassed enough, and there was no woman for the airport official to nag her about the makeup, while others wondered whether the makeup should be an issue for modern facial recognition scanners.

“No matter how thick the makeup is, the face shouldn’t be unrecognizable, right? Isn’t it time to upgrade the equipment?” one person wondered.

We reported a similar incident a while back, when several Chinese women had problems entering the country after flying to South Korea for facial plastic surgery, which changed their look so much that they became unrecognizable.

Oddity Central