Comparing ourselves to filtered versions is a losing game

After two years of staring at my face on Zoom calls, I’ve become increasingly aware of my nose, no wonder photo filters have led to body dysmorphic disorder, writes Christine Manby

(Illustration by Tom Ford)

By now we all know that the pictures we see on social media are often far removed from the original images our friends and influencers captured on their phones. Colours are brightened and shadows are lightened. Skin is smoothed, noses shrunk and eyes widened. Filters can fix everything, turning an everyday face into anime-style perfection. No wonder there’s been a surge in body dysmorphic disorder – in which sufferers wrongly see their faces or bodies as flawed – with cosmetic surgeons around the world reporting a rise in prospective patients asking for invasive procedures to make them look more like their heavily-filtered selfie-selves.

I hope I’m not desperately vain – I’m writing this wearing a dressing gown two years older than Emma Raducanu (have to keep the heating bills down somehow) – but I have to admit that seeing my face on screen more often thanks to two years of back-to-back Zoom meetings has started to get to me too. I’ve become increasingly aware of the way my nose seems to point around a corner. Is it my imagination or are my teeth much less straight than they used to be? And what on earth happened to my eyebrows? I can see them when I look in the bathroom mirror but stick me in front of my laptop camera for an important interview and they go AWOL, even if I scribble them in like I’m off to a Frida Kahlo theme night. Should I fork out the cost of a top of the range BMW to get a perfect smile? Eyebrow tattoos? A nice little ski-jump nose? I used to like my nose…