Imagine you’re feeling yourself.

You decide to take a selfie. Your Instagram page has been seriously lacking, so you feel like you want to post something. You look good, you feel good, everything’s good.

So you take a picture.

People always say, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” but what happens when the words are “Yikes!” or “Oh, ew” or “Okay, nevermind”?

Or, if you’re like me, you take a picture and think, “Hm, it’s not the best, but I can work with this.”

I am (as we are all painfully attuned to at this point) VERY into self-awareness. That includes honesty with myself and honesty with you guys, who read what I have to say. 

So let me be honest: I usually edit my pictures before I put them anywhere.

Look, there’s no point in lying to you guys. If you go on my Instagram page, you can see that about 90 percent of my pictures have a cute little vintagey-looking grain on them. 

My life doesn’t exist in a cute little vintagey grain. I use an editing app to add that.

Or sometimes, you can VERY clearly see that I’m using a filter. Like, use your sense. If you’re thinking, “That picture looks like there’s a filter on it,” it’s probably because it does. 

Most of us edit our photos before we post them anywhere.

That could be a bold statement, but I do stand by it. 

Let me use myself as an example.

I am a greasy, greasy gal. My skin SHINES like it’s trying to guide a ship into the harbor, and I’m painfully aware of that, and I don’t love that greasiness for myself.

(Self-awareness, see?)

But, if I use an editing app to blot away a little bit of that greasiness, my social media followers are none the wiser!

…right? 

Okay, now that the confession is underway, I feel like I need to get this one off my chest because it’s a doozy.

When I smile, one of my eyes squints up more than the other. Sometimes, I use my editing app to make them look even. 

I KNOW, I KNOW. I KNOW.

I will say, however, that I never retouch my body in photos. Facetune is an app that allows you to shrink or resize parts of your body, and I don’t do that anymore.

I used to. There was a long time where when I was editing photos I would look at the picture for so long that, in my mind, I started to look monstrous. I needed to shrink my waist or make my hips a little rounder. 

That actually ended up being incredibly harmful to my self-esteem and it actually made me not want to even post photos of myself anymore. 

Then, I started cultivating my social media feed a little bit, following gals who were taller or curvier or who had hip dips like me or cellulite like me and I started thinking, “hey, these gals are beautiful. Their bodies kind of look like mine.”

So, therefore, I guess I was beautiful, too.

I decided to stop editing my body.

Do I still filter my photos? 

Yes.

Do I still occasionally whiten my teeth in my pictures?

Yes. 

If I took a series of really great, fabulous photos and it turns out there was lipstick on my teeth or a big ole booger hanging out of my nose, then of course I’m going to edit that out.

And I’m all about transparency. I don’t want anyone to look at pictures of me and think that a vintagey-grain or a rosy filter or eyes that are exactly the same in their size is how I am in real life.

That’s kind of the kicker with social media as a whole, right? It’s not reality. Even if you don’t edit any pictures EVER, chances are it’s still a carefully-curated feed of your life. And THAT isn’t reality either.

The reality is that sometimes there’s a booger hanging out of my nose. 

Sometimes, my eyes are not the same size. It’s a mystery to me how that even happens, but still. Sometimes one of my eyes chooses the smaller, squintier route. 

Sometimes, the lighting isn’t that great when you take a picture. Sometimes, your hair looks flat on one side. 

I just feel like being transparent about doing some work on photos before we post them is a good thing. And maybe it doesn’t go with someone’s ~aesthetic~ to post an unaltered photo.

I get that. Some people are in it for the artistry, and I can get with that.

And me? I like to post photos where I feel beautiful. Where I feel like I’m putting my best foot forward. I’ve come pretty far in my self-love journey, but I’m not yet at the point where I’m going to snap a picture in-app and post it up without even a second glance or a subtle de-focus of my backdrop. I’m just not there yet.

And maybe you aren’t too. Maybe you don’t even want to be. Maybe you’re thinking, “Um, Emma, all my pictures need to kind of have the same LOOK on my social media pages” or “But Emma, I really love a vintage grain” (to which I would respond, “yeah, join the club.”). Whatever you’re thinking, it’s fine.

Just know that editing that kind of stuff shouldn’t make you feel guilty.

The flip side to it, though, is the key part of this post:

Know that most of what you see on social media isn’t real. If you’re editing your pictures, most people on your feed probably are, too.

It just isn’t real. There’s posing, lighting tricks, makeup, editing apps that whiten our teeth, blot our greasiness, and eliminate boogers from our noses. 

Social media isn’t reality. It’s SO EASY to edit a photo. We know that because most of us have done it. 

Trust me, it’s better to just say it out. I know I personally feel better about it.

As you scroll, you’re probably bombarded with filters and retouched photos, and maybe your photos are right there in the mix with them. And that’s okay.

Just know that the pictures you’re seeing? About 99 percent of the time, they aren’t showing the real deal. 

See? Don’t we feel better? Isn’t confession good for the soul?

Your Too-Confessed-to-be-Stressed Servant,