Selfie face distortion is driving people to get nose jobs

[Guest Nicole]

Selfies make our noses look 30 percent larger than they really are, plastic surgeons warn.

In a 2017 poll, 55 percent of facial plastic surgeons reported seeing patients who wanted surgeries to help them look better in selfies, up from 13 percent in 2016.

With the explosion of smartphones has come an epidemic of selfie-taking. These mini self-portraits are now a currency we trade on Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook. And they’re increasingly a way we see ourselves, and our flaws.

But sometimes what we see in selfies isn’t really what’s there, plastic surgeons are warning. That’s the takeaway from a new research letter published Thursday in the journal JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery.

Boris Paskhover, a facial plastic surgeon at Rutgers University and one of the authors of the paper, says patients have been coming into his clinic demanding nose jobs because they thought their noses looked too big in their selfies. The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeons has noticed the trend too. According to a 2017 poll, 55 percent of facial plastic surgeons reported seeing patients who wanted surgeries to help them look better in selfies, up from 13 percent in 2016.

Paskhover right away recognized what was really going on with all the selfie nose job requests: “I’d say, ‘Your nose doesn’t look big — there’s distortion when you keep a camera close to your face,” he said.

To prove it, Paskhover and his co-authors set out to quantify selfie distortion using a mathematical model that takes into account how the distance between a personÂ’s face and a camera lens can change their facial features in a photo.

They found that when the lens is very close to the face — about 12 inches — it makes the nose look about 30 percent larger compared to the rest of the face. You can see that difference below in the photo taken at selfie distance (12 inches) on the left versus regular portrait distance (60 inches) on the right:

JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/3/1/17059566/plastic-surgery-selfie-distortion