Or maybe you´re not wrong. (I´m certainly not but that´s not important.) We’ve all been there. You catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror, give yourself a little nod of approval—Not bad today —and then someone takes a photo of you. You look at it and immediately recoil. Who is this person? Who is this ugly $*%&? Why does he look like a sleep-deprived version of me? Left eye looks blunt. The right one even more so. And what about that second chin? And the third one..? Please don´t tell me this is what I really look like?
The truth is–no, that’s not really what you look like. But it’s also not not what you look like. Confusing? Let’s break it down.
Your Mirror is Lying to You (Sort Of)
You see yourself in the mirror every day. That reflection is flipped, showing you a reversed version of your face. It’s the version you’re most familiar with, the one you and your mighty brain unconsciously believe to be “you.” But that’s not the face the rest of the world sees.
The idea that your loved ones might actually be in love with someone else is hard to grasp, I know. Your girlfriend, your husband, even your beloved mum—they’ve all fallen for a version of you that you’ve never even seen. They all see someone completely different than you think you are.
But I don’t want you to get any gloomy thoughts. Especially if you’re reading these lines over coffee at work in the morning. Let´s keep it light and informative.
When you look at a photo, suddenly everything is flipped back to reality. Your slightly uneven eyes? That part of your smile that tilts? That one eyebrow that never fully cooperates? It’s always been there, but because it’s reversed in the mirror, you don’t notice it. When you see it unflipped in a photo, your brain goes, Nope. Something’s off. It´s not me.
The Mere-Exposure Effect: Your Brain is a Creature of Habit
Your brain loves familiarity. It happily finds comfort in things it sees often—including your reflection. The more you see something, the more you tend to like it. This is called the mere-exposure effect (a fancy term for “your brain is lazy and prefers what it knows”).
Since your mirror self is what you see every day, it becomes your “preferred” version of you. The real-world version? Less familiar, more awkward. But to everyone else, the photo version of you is the normal one. (And here’s the kicker: they probably think your mirror version looks weird.)
Blame the Lens, the Lighting, and the Timing
Let’s be real—photos lie, too. Camera lenses distort, bad lighting amplifies shadows, and candid shots freeze you mid-expression in ways that don’t flatter anyone. You don’t walk around frozen in weird angles with bad lighting, so why would you judge yourself based on one unflattering millisecond?
We can cry and curse about how we look in photos. But we can also accept that the only solution is to work with what we’ve got. We can find better light, a slightly more flattering angle—or just embrace the chaos of it all.
So, What’s the Fix?
- Flip Your Photo – If you’re really suffering, just horizontally flip your photo. It will look more like your mirror self, which might ease the shock.
- Stare at It Longer – Seriously. The more you see a photo of yourself, the more familiar it becomes, and the less weird it will seem.
- Take More Photos – Get used to seeing yourself in different angles, expressions, and lighting. The more you normalize it, the less painful it becomes.
- Remember: Everyone Else Sees You Differently Anyway – And they like you just fine. Your “bad” photo is just you being unfamiliar with yourself.
So next time you cringe at a photo, remind yourself: it’s not that you look bad, it’s just that your brain is a stubborn little thing that hates change. And really, it’s not the photo that’s wrong—it’s just your perception of it.
And if all else fails? Just accept that you are, in fact, a uniquely weird-looking human—just like me. Just like all of us.
Or, you know… avoid cameras forever and live blissfully in your mirror world. No judgment.
