Have you ever wondered why your selfies don't look quite like you, be it good or bad? Well, science says, to click perfect selfies you need to be born with 5ft long arms.
As per a research letter in the JAMA Facial Plastic Surgery journal, pictures clicked from a distance of 5ft (1.5 meters) have no facial distortions. Otherwise, your nose can end up looking up to 30 percent wider than it is.
"For years, I've heard patients and family members say, 'Oh, look at my nose, it looks so big,' when they show me a selfie...I was always telling my patients, that's not how you really look. I knew that selfies distort how your nose looks. And I wanted to prove it,' Boris Paskhover, who is the co-author of the study and facial plastic surgeon, told Live Science.
Paskhover and his colleagues at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and at Stanford University in California came up with a mathematical model to explain the reason for distortion at varying camera angles and distances.
The researchers then placed a camera 12 inches (30 cm) away, 5 feet (1.5 m) away, and an infinite distance away from each face to observe the relative distortion of facial features.
"Predictably, an image taken at 5 feet, a standard portrait distance, results in essentially no difference in perceived [nasal] size," the authors wrote, as reported by the website.
Unfortunately, as Paskhover rightly points out, that people cannot take selfies lightly and it actually determines how they look at themselves. According to a 2017 poll by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Inc., more than 50 percent of plastic surgeons said that patients come to them to look better in selfies.
"One of my concerns is, I don't want society in general to be distorted. I don't want people to think. 'This is what I look like,' when they see a selfie. You don't look like that — you look good," said Paskhover as reported.
