That horrible feeling when you went out feeling fabulous… and then saw a photo of yourself ☹️

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Just what the thread title said, really.

I know it’s silly but I’ve felt miserable all day.

I honestly thought I looked great when I went out for a friend’s 50th last night. Not saying I’m a supermodel but I really did think I looked nice. Had an outfit I’d spent time thinking about (I love clothes), my hair done, etc.

Saw the photos this morning as friends started to send them and I look awful. My outfit looked nothing like I thought, I was trying to channel minimalist sophistication but it just looked plain and made me look blobby. I looked much heavier and ‘bigger’ than I thought (I’m not remotely overweight but I definitely could tone up) and my hair looked awful.

I’m not usually critical of my appearance, I’m old enough to accept my bad points and work around them, and emphasise my good points. Which is what I thought I’d done.

I hadn’t. And now I feel really crap about myself, and silly for thinking I looked good. And wondering if I have the energy to start a new fitness/de-blobbing campaign. Which until this morning I didn’t think I was in quite such need of.

Just wondering if anyone else can relate?

BLOODY camera phones ☹️

I've totally had this. I can sense when I'm a few pounds overweight and try to avoid cameras at that time, cause I know I'll look a bit puffier. I recognise this is a bit vain and lame.

Also avoid pics taken by boyfriend / husband / male partners as for some reason, men take crappy pics. So many nights where legitimately beautiful women not captured in all their glory due to bad picture taking.

I accepted long ago I'm not particularly photogenic but ok, but I saw myself in a self-service till camera at the grocery store last week and my god...

Some hilarious and self deprecating comments on here. I would rather be friends with a funny woman than a picture-perfect one!

I know I am fat. I don't like it especially as I was always the skinny one in the group and they called me GI Jane as I used to do all the adventious activities and have interesting trips away. Any way depression and the menopause hit and I gained 5 stone.
Last week me and my friend went to the Howgills. I had black joggers on, a t shirt and a rucksack. I thought I was 'not so bad' I have seen the photo my friend took. I look like an extra large cube! I cried for a few minutes and went to the gym.
Humiliated doesn't begin to cover it.

My husbands phone pics of me are awful. Took some at my daughter's graduation & they were horrible. Dd posted some on Facebook & I told her to cut me out, they were that bad. But the ones on my phone are ok. 🤷‍♀️

I'm not sure about that. I absolutely agree that one should never take oneself that seriously, and it's good to be able to see the humour in life.

But I see too many self-deprecating comments from women all the time. And I don't think that's great. Yes, 'Suzy Quattro's fat Nan' was pretty funny, I appreciate the humour, what I didn't really like from that thread was the number of women who thought they looked great, broke out a bit of styling, and then were shot down by a bloke saying they looked like 'Colonel Gaddafi/Jimmy Saville/Grotbags' and they then relate this as a humorous story.

It's not funny, it's not self-deprecating. It's a woman feeling pretty good about herself and then some inadequate bloke taking her down, there's no humour there. None.

And I absolutely get the photo thing, but I bet you don't look at anyone else in the photo and think how awful they look. You zoom in on yourself and start picking holes. I guarantee that you look a whole lot better than you think you do.

It was always said "The camera adds 10lbs". Throw in bad lighting, bad camera angles, and so on and I would be surprised anyone came out looking good.

I have found it interesting meeting people I see on the tv in person - they are always astonishingly, in some cases frighteningly thin, but look normal weight on television with good lighting, etc.

Do not look at those! I never do now. They make my hair look beige and like it's been drawn on with edit highlighter. That can't be accurate I hope 😱

I only let trusted friends or DC take my photo as they can discard the bad ones. They will ask me to do the same.

I'm very glad it's not just me! I have a friend who loves to take photos of us out and my heart sink when I see them. They all look lovely and I look like the blob. I e now banned her from sending me the pics.

Loads of tips on YouTube, hands on hip, don’t stand full on etc.

I need to hear more about these please!

I got my hair done yesterday. I've spent the majority of the last year in bed unwell so this was a big outing and got a real transformation. My hairdresser did such an amazing job and I got him to treasure photos of it nicely styled as I wash, scrunch and go. The pictures are just... So sad. I'm chubberific.. I'm size 16, I know this and my weight fluctuates from year to year all by itself. And I've been taking a lot of painkillers and been very inactive and my insomnia is the worst it's been. But I really didn't think I looked that bad. My beautiful hair and my crappy moonface

Someone I was on holiday with described me as photogenic, in a surprised voice.

Which means I must look terrible in real life…

I think I’d prefer to look terrible in photos!

Unleashing my inner potato-face

I absolutely hate my photo, especially when like you OP I "think" I'm looking killer gorgeous. It's like the IPhone camera is conspiring against me - ha! You think you're lovely, well cop a load of this.

99.9% of us don't have perfect symmetrical faces, the difference with movie stars and models is simply that they can have their photo taken at most angles and they always look stunning. Luck of the draw I'm afraid.

I keep telling myself I'm amazing in real-life and that's what matters.

This made me laugh! I had similar recently. I am overweight but for a wedding, I carefully chose what I thought was a flattering wrap dress. At home in the mirror, it looked lovely. On the photos, I looked like a sea monster.

its practice and using a app 😂
I take shit photos and don’t have any group photos / family photos I absolutely refuse to do group photos
but I can take a decent selfie with a selfie stick run it through remeni app and I look fab and very natural

If I went missing and they posted one of my normal photos no one would ever know it’s me
I could probably get away with a bank robbery as I can look so different in pictures

Always disappointed when I feel I'm wafting around in some lovely linen and then catch sight of myself in a shop window and look like a sack of spuds.

@inadarkwood Yes! And some of them have really rather large heads - it translates to slender/normal onscreen but in person they are lollipops!
My husband sent me a photo from our holidays that sent me into a tailspin - I had thought the jeans were flattering, the t-shirt with an Oxford shirt over quite stylish.... My word, I looked like three tyres stacked up and topped with a truly terrible scarecrow hat!

Thanks so much everyone, some of these responses have made me laugh out loud 😂 but mostly I’m glad to hear it’s not just me!!! (Though sorry other people feel shit too…)

Thing is, I actually look better (still utterly crap, but better) in some of the photos I didn’t know were being taken. The posed shots are the absolute horrors, because I am always SO self-conscious about my photo being taken (probably because, as I had genuinely forgotten until reading this thread I started, I’m the least photogenic person on the planet).

Most of my friends see a camera these days and instinctively all seem to do that pose with the hip dropped, hand on hip, slight turn… honestly I would feel ABSURD doing this, seeing a camera just makes me immediately want to run, so instead I do a rictus grin and just wait for it to be over. So I might (doubtful) look better in the posed shots if I actually posed but I would feel SUCH a silly sausage doing the pose, even if it works.

I agree with the poster who said maybe it’s because we aren’t used to seeing ourselves ‘flipped’… but then that means I have to accept I look like this! In my mirror/head I’m a bit of a stunner 😆 but clearly my real face is the WRONG WAY ROUND.

Also agree about the reverse body dysmorphia!! Actually tbf that’s something I worked to build, because I had eating disorders in my teens/20s and was so so unhappy with myself and my body. Plus I was bullied at school for my appearance and took years to shake that off. Now at 50, I’ve managed to string together years of feeling like I look GREAT, which is nicer than feeling like I look ugly and weird… but then the camera thing happens and it makes me suspect people at school were right all along!!

Like others have posted, I avoid cameras like the plague but there were SO many at this party, plus I kept being hauled in for group shots (with all my lovely looking, dropped-hip posing friends!!)

Pleased I'm not alone. I look fine in the mirror, bit the camera does not like me.

I have 3 DDs, DD1 is like me - very difficult to get a good photograph of her, DD2 is the opposite -she looks amazing on photos. DD3 is a mix of the 2. All 3 of them are equally beautiful.

Every single posed picture I've ever had looks terrible. The (most of) ones that are just "caught" are OK though.

When I'm feeling particularly bad about it I "critique" my friends' photos (in my head) with the same level of critism as I give myself. My friends are all lovely and their photos perfectly fine, but if I look at them in the same way I look at my own, there's always something I'd hate, the flabby arms, the hair not as good as it could be or a bit okd fashioned, the make up too heavy or the lipstick doesn't, clothes not hanging right...but when I'm looking at them as a photo of a friend I think they're lovely.

For those of you saying that the camera makes you look bigger than you are, it can work the other way too. I can look at myself in the mirror and be happy with what I see but a subsequent photo will show a tiny, scrawny looking, crone.

I think (and hope) that the posters saying that a bad photo is not representative of our appearance as a whole are right. They are just a split second unflattering image/angle. Just as I have to accept that I'm not always as good looking as some of the few flattering photos of me in existence, neither am I as wizened and shrunken looking as some of the bad ones.

OP I went to a black tie last night. Hair make up, new frock and very complimentary DP. There was a professional photographer there and he was printing the photos to give out at the end of the dinner. I am congratulating myself for having the wisdom to refuse my photo being taken - it would have potentially ruined my night and confidence.

Same. What is this? And do I look like I look in the mirror or do I look like I do on camera?