I’m sat on the rug in my Hackney flat right now, legs crossed, bare feet, bright blue nails tapping the side of my phone like they’re trying to start a fight. Cherry vape cloud hanging in the air, oat-milk flat white going cold on the floor next to me. I’ve been scrolling back through old photos from a few years ago and it’s like looking at a stranger who borrowed my glasses.
Those pictures are not me. Not really. Skin like a plastic doll, eyes too big, jawline sharpened to a point that never existed, pores banished like they were a crime. I used to slather the filters on every single selfie. TikTok ones, Instagram ones, the cheap AI ones that promised you’d look like you’d just stepped out of a magazine. I did it for years. Full commitment. Because let’s be honest, babes, I’m not the prettiest girl on the block. Never have been. Council-estate face from Basildon, the kind that looks better in person after two pints than it does under a ring light. I knew it. So I fixed it. Or I thought I was fixing it.
Every time I posted I felt a little safer. Like I’d put on armour. The comments came in nicer. More likes. People I barely knew sliding into the DMs saying I looked “stunning hun”. It worked, in that cheap little way that makes you keep doing it. I told myself it was just self-care. A bit of polish. Same as putting on mascara before a Zoom call with an editor who already thinks I’m too Essex and too loud. Harmless, right?
Then this bloke I knew said something that landed different. He was the type who could fluff a woman up without it feeling slimy. Proper knack for it. He’d look at you and find the bit that was actually good and say it like it was obvious. One day I sent him a raw photo, no filter, no AI, just me in my hoodie with the messy bun and the glasses slipping down my nose. He came back and said I looked prettier like that. Real. Not perfect, just pretty. He said the filtered version looked like I was hiding.
I sat with that for days. It meant everything. Not because I suddenly thought I was gorgeous. I’m still not. But because someone had looked at the actual face and not flinched. He’d seen the pores and the slightly uneven skin and the way my smile goes a bit lopsided when I’m properly laughing, and he’d still called it pretty. That was the first time I posted the dog version. No slider, no smoothing, just the face I actually wake up with. I waited for the comments to drop off. They didn’t, not really. A few people said I looked tired. One old school friend from Basildon asked if I was okay. But most just carried on. And I felt lighter.
That was a couple of years ago. I’m thirty now. I couldn’t give a fuck what the algorithm thinks of my jawline. I post the real thing because the alternative started feeling like I was lying to myself every time I hit share. The filtered me was a performance. This one is just Tuesday. Vape in one hand, coffee in the other, blue nails chipped because I keep knocking them on the laptop.
But I still feel it for the ones who can’t switch off. The girls who treat every photo like a job interview. The ones who won’t go on camera without the Zoom beauty slider cranked up so high they look like a different species. I see it in The Coven group chat sometimes. Someone drops a selfie and you can clock the filter from the first pixel. Skin like marble, eyes like a cartoon. We all know. We still heart it. Then we laugh about it later when she’s not in the thread. That’s the bit that sits wrong with me.
A male mate of mine said it straight the other week. We were having a pint after I’d been ranting about some viral “get ready with me” that was ninety percent editing. He said most blokes hate the filters. Proper hate them. They clock it instantly and it makes them take the person less seriously. Like if you can’t show your actual face, what else are you hiding? He said it feels like you’re not even in the room. You’re sending a stand-in. And the women? He reckoned they laugh at the obvious ones even while they’re doing the exact same thing on their own accounts. That’s the part that stings. We police each other while the apps count the money.
The beauty industry clocked this years ago and called it self-care. Buy the filter pack. Subscribe to the AI skin app. Spend twenty minutes sliding the smoothness bar before you join the meeting. It’s sold as looking after yourself. Really it’s just another way to make you feel like the raw version isn’t good enough. Late-stage capitalism loves an insecurity it can charge for. First they set the standard, then they sell you the software to fake it, then they act surprised when everyone looks the same and no one feels real.
I used to do the Zoom slider too. Every call with Novara or whoever. I’d sit there with the little preview window open, dragging the beauty bar until I looked like I’d had eight hours sleep and a facial. Then I’d unmute and try to sound like a serious journalist while my actual face was hidden behind a layer of digital foundation. It felt professional at the time. Now it just feels like I was scared. Scared the editor would see the tired eyes and think I couldn’t handle the brief. Scared the audience would clock I was just some Hackney girl with council-estate roots playing at being polished.
The funny thing is the raw version gets more respect in the long run. People remember the one who shows up looking like she actually lives in her body. The filtered ones blur together. You forget their names by the next scroll. I notice it on the train sometimes. Girl opposite me, twenty-two maybe, filming a story with the filter so heavy her face barely moves. She’s performing pretty. Meanwhile the woman next to her, no makeup, messy hair, just existing, looks more alive. I know which one I’d rather talk to.
I still catch myself reaching for the slider on bad days. The ones where the flat feels too small and the news is all patriarchy and the vape isn’t hitting right. Old habit. Then I remember that bloke’s voice saying prettier real. Not perfect. Pretty. And I put the phone down. The dog version is the one that actually belongs to me.
There’s a whole generation coming up who’ve never posted a photo without some kind of edit. They don’t even know what their own skin looks like under fluorescent lights. That’s not self-care. That’s a slow erasure. The industry will keep inventing new tools, new sliders, new AI that can rebuild your entire face in one tap. They’ll call it empowerment. They always do. Meanwhile the rest of us are left staring at a version of ourselves that doesn’t sweat or get tired or look a bit peaky after a late night Tesco run.
I don’t have a tidy answer. I just know the filtered version started feeling like a costume I couldn’t take off. The real one is messier. It’s got the blue nails that never stay perfect and the glasses that slide down and the hair that does whatever it wants. It’s the face that laughs too loud on the train and snorts when something’s actually funny. It’s the one that still goes home every other weekend for mum’s Sunday roast and doesn’t bother putting on a full face for it.
At thirty I finally clocked that the people who matter don’t need the slider. The ones who do were never looking at me anyway. They were looking at the idea of me. And ideas don’t last. Faces do. Even the ordinary ones. Especially the ordinary ones.
So yeah. I use the dog version now. Not because I’ve suddenly become confident. Because the alternative started tasting like a lie I was telling myself every single day. And I’m done with that particular performance. The rest of you can keep the filters if they make you feel safer. I get it. I really do. I was you. I just don’t want to be her anymore. The real face is the only one I’ve got left that actually feels like mine. And for now, that’s enough.