Photos of myself make me shudder in horror. Does that mean I’m hideous? | Well actually

Hello Ugly,

Photos of myself make me shudder in horror. I focus on my eyes (small and pouchy) my skin (pasty) and my chin (large and spotty). Very Henry VIII! These are all ongoing insecurities, but day-to-day, I am content with how I look. Occasionally, I even feel pretty. So it’s hard not to be convinced, when I see a photograph of myself, that I am under a horrible illusion of being happily average-looking and am actually pretty hideous. This is made even worse when I see a photo as being terribly unflattering and others say it’s nice! I am aware this is quite superficial, but it makes me really upset. Which is the truth here? Because surely an average-looking person would not have every photo looking so awful it actually hurts.

– Photo Finished

My mother is gorgeous. Stunning, even. She was homecoming queen in high school and has the smile of a true crime cliché (that is to say, it lights up a room). Blonde, razor-cut bangs frame her big, brown eyes – rimmed in her signature liquid liner, always – which literally twinkle when she laughs.

There is no photographic evidence of this.

I cannot make sense of it, but something happens to this dear, beautiful woman whenever a camera comes near. Her face contorts at the click of a shutter. A combination of the following features appears in every picture she’s ever taken: squeezed-shut lids. Crossed eye. Eyebrow askance. Elvis lip. Cowlick. I sometimes insist a particular picture isn’t as bad as she thinks; I’m lying. Her driver’s license photo? Horrendous. Her Facebook profile picture? A close-up of the family dog.

I take comfort in this whenever I come across a less-than-flattering image of myself. Photos do not reflect reality, I think. Just look at all the terrible pictures of Mom!

Maybe you can take comfort in this too, Photo Finished. (She knows I’m sharing this, by the way.) But I also hope you (and I!) can examine why my mom’s example might ease our minds – and why we panic over “bad” pictures anyway.

In the roughly 200 years since the invention of the camera, photography has become a key way people in modern societies look at the world, and therefore verify its (and our own) existence. “The look of the world continually proposes and confirms our relation to [its] thereness, which nourishes our sense of being,” explains art critic John Berger in Understanding A Photograph.

External imagery has also replaced the way we remember things. “What served in the place of the photograph, before the camera’s invention?” Berger asks. “Memory. What photographs do out there in space was previously done within reflection.”

Considering photography’s function as a spiritual symbol and second brain, I wouldn’t say obsessing over pictures of yourself is superficial. It’s almost inevitable. More so when you account for this technology’s effect on beauty standards.

The prevalence of the camera has resulted in a “tremendous promotion of the value of appearances”, Susan Sontag writes in her 1977 essay collection On Photography. The more beautiful the appearance, the more valuable it is, and the more moral it’s presumed. In fact, promoting beauty and morality is baked into the premise of photography: when inventor Fox Talbot patented the photograph in 1841, he called it the calotype – kalos being the Greek word for both beautiful and noble.

As picture-taking has changed our relationship to being and memory, beauty and morality, it’s also changed our bodies.

The cameras of the 1920s were low-definition, making subjects appear super-smooth and unblemished. Public perception of celebrity-level beauty changed, and skin-smoothing cosmetics surged in popularity. In the 1980s, digital airbrushing became standard practice in women’s magazines, and cosmetic enhancements to emulate the effect of airbrushing followed. (Charlotte Tilbury Airbrush Flawless Foundation is still a best-seller.)

People came to prefer the representation to the real – which is probably why an “unflattering” representation bothers you, despite your general satisfaction with the real.

This impulse has only gotten stronger since selfies took over social media. Consider “Instagram Face”, a now-ubiquitous blend of facial features inspired by photo-editing tools like filters, Facetune and Photoshop: ageless skin, full lips, high cheekbones, small nose, wide eyes.

Grafting these online effects onto an actual face demands significant cosmetic investment: makeup and skincare (there are real products called Skin Filter Serum, Augmented Skin Face Cream and Software Update Retinol), injectables (neuromodulators, fillers) and surgeries (nose jobs, facelifts). Since the emergence of Instagram Face in 2019, the plastic surgery sector has grown about 10%, and the number of injectable procedures performed in the United States and Canada has increased by 70%. Aesthetic doctors report that patients will bring in their own “beauty filtered photos” as references “for the plastic surgeon to imitate”.

These violent processes – scalpels, syringes, smashed bones, scraped cartilage – nod to what Sontag called the “predatory” nature of pictures. They’re often endured in the name of authenticity.

As more functions of modern life move to the virtual realm, people say they feel “most like themselves” online, behind the mask of an avatar. This follows naturally from our magical thinking about photography. Throughout history, many cultures believed a person’s picture was a manifestation of their spirit, and fragments of that belief remain today. “For example, in our reluctance to tear up or throw away the photograph of a loved one, especially of someone dead or far away,” Sontag says. The current equivalent? Our reluctance to leave our filtered faces in our phones.

And so, I understand why you’re struggling to identify which version of you – the flesh or the photo – is the true you.

I’m going to assume the terrible pictures you speak of aren’t edited or enhanced. It’s tempting to think undoctored photos must reflect reality. Marketing materials for the first Kodak camera promised pictures “without any mistake”. Crime scene photos are considered factual evidence. Clinical trials of beauty products are proven through before-and-after images.

“Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it,” Sontag tells us. However: “This is the opposite of understanding, which starts from not accepting the world as it looks.” Crime scene photos are often misinterpreted. Before-and-after images are advertisements – “which constitute a global system of misinformation”, according to Berger.

That photographs are not truthful is implicit in the way we talk about them. Someone who is “photogenic” looks especially attractive in pictures (this is the opposite of your problem, but no less of a lie). The phrase “as pretty as a picture” implies beauty beyond the norm.

Photography is further divorced from reality through the mechanics of consuming images via smartphones and computers.

Digital screens constitute “an entirely new experience” of vision, writes John Freeman in The Tyranny of E-Mail. In person, people are illuminated by light that bounces off the body’s surface and reflects onto the viewer’s retina. But through a screen, “light is shot directly into our eyes”, Freeman says. It’s no wonder, then, that as digital images become dominant, so do makeup techniques that approximate the appearance of IRL light on photographed skin, like highlighting and contouring.

Making a three-dimensional face look more like a flattened photograph – and then adding dimension with makeup in preparation to be photographed – is madness. This attachment to the illusion of image-making is not only pushing us toward an increasingly unachievable beauty standard, it’s siphoning our time, money, energy, health and headspace too.

More from Jessica DeFino’s Ask Ugly:

With all this in mind, I need to emphasize that you are in a great spot! You may not be content in the image world, Photo Finished, but you’re content in the physical world – the multi-dimensional world of time and space and life, of feelings and connection and beauty beyond screens! Personally, I think we all should strive for this. Lean into it.

When you see a picture of yourself, try not to surveil your face. If you have to, talk yourself through it: I will not let this image override my own self-image. Focus on how you felt the moment it was taken. Consciously prioritize how you experience life and deprioritize how it looks. After all, even if you are as “hideous” as your photos suggest, what does it matter? You don’t feel hideous day-to-day. You’re surrounded by people who want to document and celebrate the time they spend with you.

Who knows – when you take the pressure off, you might even enjoy pictures for what they are. Did I mention my mom is a photographer?