True appearance vs. reality

How do we explain the excitement of going to a wedding. We dress in our finest wear, we spend time in the mirror making our hair just-so, and our skin just right, and if we are women our make-up well styled. We go to the event feeling very beautiful and handsome. And then a photographer stops by and takes our picture and we see the picture and all of a sudden we don’t look so good. Our lips are too small, our nose too big, our pores too large, and the lines of our face are too prominent. So what is the difference between the before and the after picture.
Snow White’s evil step-mother tells us the answer. “Mirror mirror on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all”. “Why you are, no you are, no you are” says the mirror to everyone.” No wonder then we are disillusioned when we see our photograph. The mirror in our head lies. Not only do we not see ourselves in reality in the mirror on the wall, we do not see ourselves as we truly are in the mirror in our heads. We are neither so beautiful nor so homely as we would pretend by looking in the mirror. And it is the discrepancy with the photograph, not actual imperfections that make us more or less attractive.
I recently had an unhappy patient who complained that after lipoaugmentation she did not look any better. To be sure the photographs proved her cheeks were higher, she had more proportion in her face, and her skin appeared softer and smoother. Yet she did not smile, did not fix her hair, did not dress any different. With the same dour appearance in her before photo she changed nothing for the after photo. The only difference was in the improved proportion of her cheeks.
If any of us wants to appear more attractive, smile first and look to cosmetic surgery after.