Have you ever gotten ready for a night out and been happy with what you saw in the mirror, only to be disheartened by a photo taken of you shortly thereafter? Unflattering pictures have a way of shaking your confidence.
A simple analogy — courtesy of Bay Area cosmetic dermatologist Dr. Samantha Ellis — may help you reframe negative thoughts about how you appear in photos. She posted a video on her Instagram in June about a memorable piece of advice she once received from a mentor of hers.
The analogy “really changed the way I view photography of myself because I generally don’t like the way I look in pictures,” Ellis says in the video. “And it also changed the way I talk to my patients as a cosmetic dermatologist because I have lots of patients who are beautiful and they come in to have cosmetic work done just because they don’t like the way they look in a photo.”
Here’s what her mentor said:
“Think of all the beautiful sunsets you have ever seen in your life. And then you go to take a picture of it and when you look at the photo you go, ‘Ugh, this photo doesn’t really do this sunset justice.’ You are the sunset. You are beautiful. And just because the photo doesn’t do you justice, doesn’t detract from any of that.”
The video has amassed more than 22 million views, hundreds of thousands of likes and thousands of comments from people thanking Ellis for this perspective. So if you consider yourself unphotogenic, you’re definitely not alone.
Elisa Martínez — a psychotherapist in Aromas, California, who specializes in self-esteem — said it’s pretty common for people to dislike the way they look in photos, “especially with the rise of social media and the emphasis on presenting our ‘best self’ to the world.”
“Common complaints I hear are ‘I look so old!’ or ‘I’m too fat’ — perceptions that are largely rooted in ageist, fat-phobic societal beauty standards, among others,” she told HuffPost.
“Some complaints fixate on specific physical features — think crooked nose, skin discolorations, etc. — that, in reality, are usually not perceived as negatively by outsiders.”
Disliking how you look in pictures may be explained, in part, by the “mere exposure effect,” Martínez said — which refers to our tendency to develop a preference for things we’re more familiar with.
“While we’re used to seeing our reflections in the mirror, photo images are less familiar to us, and so there can be a big discrepancy between how we think we look — based on the mirror — and how photos depict us,” she explained.
“Seeing photos of ourselves can feel unsettling because we are seeing the unfamiliar reverse of our mirror image. This can cause us to dislike our appearance in photos, since ‘unfamiliarity’ equals ‘less appealing.’”
When asked about the sunset analogy from Ellis’s video, Martínez said she believes it could help people begin to feel less self-critical about how they look in pictures.
“It’s a fact that smartphone camera lenses often distort facial features, causing some parts to look smaller, wider, etc., than they are in real life,” she explained. “The angles or lighting captured by cameras similarly can result in images that aren’t necessarily a true reflection of what you look like.”
That being said, Martínez believes this analogy might be a “harder sell” for folks who are highly critical of how they look in pictures because the “deep emotional attachment people have to their self-image” makes it difficult to view their photos objectively, she said.
“For this reason, seeing a photo of oneself is much more emotionally charged than seeing a photo of a sunset or object,” said Martínez. “Confirmation bias can make it more difficult for those who believe ‘I look horrible in photos’ to take the positive message of the sunset analogy at face value.”
The well-known saying “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts” is relevant here, Martínez said.
“A one-dimensional photo can’t fully capture three-dimensional you, and your overall appearance results from a complex, nuanced combination of all your features — not just one or two that you may deem undesirable,” she added.
