I’d rather be the girl on the right

AfTer I’ve taken a picture, the first thing I’ll do is tweak my skin tone. A bronzed, sun-kissed look makes me feel more confident. I’ll also slim my jawline by using a tool which ‘bends’ the picture.

I’ve started to get wrinkles around my mouth, and I struggle with bad skin, but I use an acne tool that removes blemishes. I think my eyebrows and eyelashes are too thin, so if I don’t have make-up on, I’ll use a filter to fill them in and ‘apply’ eyelashes.

The only thing I’m happy to leave unfiltered are my lips — I’ve been getting fillers since I was 18. It costs £300 each time, yet it’s worth it because I used to feel very conscious about my smile — I had a thin top upper lip and it looked very uneven.

It usually takes me ten minutes to tweak a picture, but I have spent 45 minutes doing it. I use the facetune app. I joined Instagram when I was 11, and can spend hours scrolling through people’s posts. I love everything about the Kardashians and their aesthetic. I also look to Love Island star MollyMae’s photos for inspiration.

With an unedited selfie I’ll get around 20 ‘likes’; when I’ve tweaked it, I can get more than 100. It’s a real confidence boost. I’d never share this unfiltered picture of myself without make-up, above left. (TikTok Bold Glamour filter, pictured right.)

My friends and I organise dates for the purpose of taking pictures for Instagram. We recently got dressed up for a breakfast date at a cafe, took between 300 and 400 selfies, and then sat in silence for ten minutes as we scrolled through them. Yet there weren’t any we were happy with. My colleagues say I’m unrecognisable on Instagram. But is that a bad thing? I’d rather be the girl in those posts.