How I Stopped Hating My Appearance And Learned To Like It

“If you want me to hide any photos, let me know”, one of my best friends messaged me after sending me the link to his wedding album.

It was a gorgeous day; a sweet, intimate ceremony, and I was fortunate enough to be one of the bridesmaids.

Despite all this happiness and joy, he knew that I would be worrying about how I looked in the photos.

I really hated my face, and I hated how it looked in some of the photos, but more than that, I hated that he knew to even suggest that to me. It was thoughtful and considerate – but also so, SO miserable.

I really couldn’t keep going on like this.

I knew I wasn’t great in front of cameras but the rush of fear that ran through my body every time I wasn’t the one clicking the shutter was getting out of control, making even the most special occasions a place of anxiety.

I wouldn’t say I once loved my appearance, but for a long time I just didn’t care. I knew that my features were nice, my family is made up of beautiful women, and in my early 20s I was able to get free drinks very easily.

At some point during the pandemic, though, I really started to hate my face. I would hide from mirrors and delete photos my partner had lovingly taken of me – candid shots of me reading, or even just snuggling with a cat.

I cried at pictures taken of me. My friends stopped taking them, or, at the very least, stopped showing me.

I called myself ugly constantly.

I did like selfies, though.

Selfies were different. I controlled the angle, the filter, the pose. When taking selfies, I finally had control over what people saw when they looked at me. As long as they never saw me in person.

I held my phone at a tilt, angling from above to get what I felt was the ‘best’ [read: slimming] version of me. Then, I’d choose a filter – usually a funny one with patterns or something silly written on them.

That way, I figured, I wasn’t falling victim to filters because I wasn’t really taking them seriously.

Makenzie Schroeder and Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz explored the impact of beauty filters in a paper published earlier this year in Computers in Human Behaviour.

In this study, the team found that face-slimming beauty filters on your own image are actually more harmful to body image than watching somebody else using them, or neutral colour-changing filters.

Sadly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, people who used the slimming filter preferred the filtered version of themselves and felt ‘significantly’ worse about themselves as a result.

The authors suggested that beauty filters may encourage us to compare our real selves to an artificial version of ourselves, leaving us disappointed with how we actually look, which could result in a significant impact on mental health and increased body dysmorphia.

Sounds horribly relatable.

First of all, I let go of filters. It was a sad parting but I knew deep down that whether they were ‘funny’ or ‘flattering’, they were doing a number on my self image.

It did take time, and I am occasionally partial to making photos a bit brighter as I worry about my skin looking dull – but, for the most part, I’ve let go of the urge to filter images of myself.

I also stopped taking selfies. I am from the MySpace generation and for a long time I instinctively took photos of myself a few times a week. I knew that to recover from this self-loathing, I needed to not think about my appearance so often.

Ultimately, it’s just my face. Who cares?

I let my loved ones take photos of me again. I let go of the silly stubbornness that had become a feature on our time together and instead allowed myself to see what I look like through their eyes.

On a recent trip to Prague with my partner, he took a photo of me in a restaurant. I was tired, I had been a little anxious through the day and I was ready to go right to bed after our dinner.

In the picture he took, though? I look happy.

It’s not the most flattering photo of me – not even close – but it is one that I remember feeling content and warm in.

I remember the noise of the restaurant, the pizza that we shared and the butterflies in my stomach knowing I was in a city I’d been desperate to see for a decade.

Always being, or looking, beautiful really isn’t the point of it all. Accepting that not liking my appearance isn’t the end of the world completely changed me.