My daughter tells me that I am not mastering the selfie! She is often horrified that I will post unattractive pictures taken with friends or people I meet. Honestly, I snap and post and don’t give it much thought. But come on, I finally learned to text with both hands to stop embarrassing her! Now this!

Apparently, this is a problem. Others are feeling the “I don’t look so good in that selfie” pain as plastic surgeons tell us that patients are scheduling appointments in order to correct their faces based on their social media appearances. They look at those pictures and think their noses are too big, My nose does look surprisingly bigger now that I think about it. But I always thought it was the angle of the camera. I mean, when you try to hold your phone far enough to get a good angle–well, you  can’t do it unless you have the wing span of Michael Jordan!

Never fear, the plastic surgeons can help us out. They actually studied this and here is what they found. What we see in the those selfies is not what we really look like. First, the  nose is closer to the camera lens than any other part of our face so they look bigger than in reality. I knew it!

When they measured faces, they found that if you take a selfie 12 inches away, your nose looks 30% larger than  if you took a picture 5 feet away. We just haven’t mastered the selfie angles to correct this!  And the plastic surgeons want you to know, this is not your real self-image. But because so many of us live on screens and post our selfies for the world to see, we are self-critical. You have to wonder if  there is selfie technology that adjusts for this. Wait, China already does this -it has software to optimizes the face to meet some standard of beauty!

So get out your filters, know your angles and don’t be like me and just click and post! Or,be like me and  just have fun with it and not care…I know I am showing my age by saying this but hey, I don’t need another way for people to tell me what I am supposed to look like to meet some standard of beauty someone makes up. How often have you met someone and thought that they look nothing like their pictures! Remember that when you meet me if you go off my selfie postings! My nose really isn’t that big!

And perhaps the message is that if we have to consult plastic surgeons based on our selfie, maybe we are focusing on the external a little too much these days and need to work on issues of the heart–being kinder, more compassionate and caring. You can’t really pick that up in a selfie! And so I muse and think of a day when my selfies may look more attractive, or maybe not, because I just don’t think it is that important. Selfie perfection is not my goal. I prefer real life, real people…and face to face contact.