On selfies, celebrities, social media culture, compare and despair , and honesty about editing…

HIS IS YOUR FRIENDLY REMINDER THAT THE ALMOST ALL THE PHOTOS YOU SEE ON SOCIAL MEDIA AND IN MEDIA AND ADVERTISING ARE LESS THAN FULLY HONEST. MANY OF THEM ARE OUTRIGHT BULLSHIT.

You are probably comparing yourself to images that aren’t real. We all do that comparing in some ways.

I know enough people who are regularly photographed for professional purposes to understand the process of creating those images is tantamount to creating art. It goes way beyond just professional hair and makeup.

Hours of post-photo editing go into creating the gorgeous images we see in print and online. By the time we see a model or celebrity image, probably dozens of people have worked on the image. A cover shot might have as many as two hundred post-photographer hours of editing and artistry.

Consciously, we know the photos are edited. Few of us understand how much they are edited.  Our subconscious eye tends to believe the photos as we see them. We compare ourselves to images that are not real even when we don't want to - even when we tell ourselves we don't.

Celebrity photos involve professional hair, makeup, and wardrobe. That is a big deal. Even the "candid” shots you see usually include professional hair and makeup. Those people work with professional stylists daily. Celebrities cannot afford to go out looking like an average person, even though they are. They do not want to land on the cover of a gossip magazine with a headline about letting themselves go just because they went to Whole Foods without enough makeup.

At my age, when it looks like celebrity women in their 50s do not age at all, aging can feel even more like a failure. Celebrity women look like they are aging younger than ever, while the rest of us are just getting older. No matter how well you take care of yourself, aging happens. When I look at other women, I love that for THEM. I see the profound and wild beauty in their aging. I want to be highly enlightened and loving every one of my wrinkles. I will not lie. I am not completely there. I am working on it.

Celebrity culture is intentionally designed to make us feel bad about ourselves, so we will spend money to feel better.

Then there is social media and the photos we see of the "real" people we follow. A whole industry is devoted to creating a social media persona that looks "perfect" or at least better than us - and we know that. We can smell that kind of facade from miles away. We realize that social media perfect can't be real all the time. Consciously we know it anyway. Subconsciously though, a part of us still believes the highly curated, perfectly smoothed, staged, "real-life" images are honest. They are not, but the “seeing is believing” parts of our brain still cling to those images as fodder for self-doubt.

Then, going one more layer in, there is the selfie.

Selfies are a skill - no more, no less.

Anyone can learn to take a good selfie, but not everyone does. As a woman who spent most of her life hiding from the camera, mastering the art of getting a good selfie was transforming on many levels. I am good at getting a deceptively great selfie.

So, let us talk about this photo:

First of all, I am happy to be fully transparent and say, three months ago, I got Botox for the first time. Wearing a mask as much as I do was showing on my face. I started seeing a lot of wrinkles under my eyes and my face was tense all the time. I got Botox on the sides of my eyes and I am so thankful I did. I will do it again.I still have wrinkles under my eyes, but my face feels and looks much more relaxed. I have fewer headaches than before. My crow's feet are more or less gone. It’s a win/win.

Secondly, I do edit my photos. This photo was taken on my iPhone. I change the filter setting to Vivid, which makes the color more vibrant and is much more forgiving for my complexion. Sometimes I use the exposure setting to turn up the light on my photos even more. That one step tends to soften wrinkles. Recently, I have been using the “relight” feature on Facetune to brighten the exposure in a way I can’t with my standard iPhone tools. I do it because professional tools for exposure editing make my skin look better than in real life.

I do not use Facetune to erase my skin or change my facial shape or features. The color-preset filters are fun to play with. I do post selfies occasionally that have been Facetune color pre-set filtered. Facetune has a set of Black and White presets called Grace that I deeply love. I have MANY selfies and portraits of my fam using Grace filters by Facetune on my personal camera roll.

This photo was edited by:

Using the Vivid setting on my iPhone and Relight in Facetune

This photo was taken in my car. I edited out the seatbelt.

I took this photo on Sunday, along with twenty-seven others you will not see.

This is a good photo of me. It is makeup lighter than usual for a pic I might share publicly. I kind of liked the fresh-face. That is what I imagine myself looking like in the morning, well rested BECAUSE I do put lip stain on before I go to bed. That said, most mornings, I don’t look that well-rested.

If you met me in person, you would recognize me. I keep my social media pics current for that reason. However, let us be clear, unless I had a professional lighting team following me around, in a  candid photo taken on a fun evening out or day at the beach, I would not glow the way I do in this photo. If I were laughing, you’d see more of those lines the digital lighting edits soften. I might have a double chin depending on the angle of the photographer.

My point here is: Imagery is artistry - and frankly, almost always at least somewhat dishonest. Photos tell a story of a tiny moment in time. At this point, almost all of what we see is either edited A LOT or a little. Those photos are least cherry-picked from hundreds of digital pics it costs nothing to take.

DO NOT ALLOW YOURSELF TO PLAY ANY KIND OF COMPARE AND DISPAIR GAME.

Check yourself more than twice because compare and despair hides in places we don’t like to look.

The most beautiful people in the world are pretty much average people in real-life.

Post your pictures.

Share your smile.

Edit or don’t edit.

Just remember, with professional hair, make-up, and wardrobe AND with hours of expert post-photo professional editing, you too could be a super-model - and that’s a fact.

Sharing is sexy. If you liked this article, share, comment, or pass it on.

Lisa Hayes, The Love Whisperer, is an LOA Relationship Coach. She helps clients leverage Law of Attraction to get the relationships they dream about and build the lives they want. Lisa is the author of the hit books, Score Your Soulmate and How to Escape from Relationship Hell and The Passion Plan. Lisa also trains the worlds best coaches at www.thecoachingguild.com.