With its lens tool, Snapchat allows some 150 million daily users to alter reality and play with identity in ways that border on the absurd.

You can turn yourself into a pineapple, a dog or a character befitting a Roy Lichtenstein painting.

The lenses are blunt, feature-warping tools that generate more than 30 million enhanced selfies a day. Any missteps quickly enter the public record.

Snapchat lenses have drawn criticism in the past with accusations that the app was promoting blackface or encouraging whitened skin tones as an ideal of beauty.