You mostly like your own face. You like looking at it in the mirror and wish that somehow you could capture the self you see in a photograph. You can't, of course, because to get that exact angle, the angle of eyes and nose and chin that you so admire when you accidentally (or deliberately) see it reflected, would mean the camera would be covering your face. You tilt your phone, hold it up awkwardly out of the frame, use the timer, to no avail.
Yours is not the most photogenic of faces. The points of the bow of your upper lip are uneven; from a certain angle, this gives you an unintentional pout or sneer. The placement of your eyes is not symmetrical. When you were younger, you wished your nose was smaller, thinner, although with age you have grown to rather like it. You are fond of your cheekbones, and your teeth.
You believe (perhaps erroneously) that your face is more pleasing in person than in pictures. You do not know what you look like when you laugh or smile (an honest laugh or smile, in the moment, free of pose and guile), but you hope that it is as beautiful as the faces of people you know (or strangers, even) when they laugh or smile for you and not the camera.
You like your face best with a thin strip of black eyeliner, winged up slightly at the outside corners, and a coat of mascara. (Your eyelashes are naturally straight and pale, and somewhat sparse.) You are not an expert at make up, have never learned to contour cheekbones or blend multiple eye shadow shades (the most you do is two), but you are rather proud that it does not take much to make you feel pretty: the aforementioned eyeliner and mascara, a dab of concealer here and there, a swipe of blush, a hint of eyebrow pencil. (You have always admired the dramatically dark, perfectly penciled arcs of the eyebrows of other girls but feel they would look somehow out of place on your own face.) You own many lipsticks and glosses, but you like the natural colour of your own lips best.
You are no longer young, a fact that is often hard to accept. But you see it sometimes when trying to take a selfie: the hollows and shadows, the creases and lines. You mostly like your own face, but sometimes you feel old and ugly.
Never take a selfie from below. Or from too far above. Or straight on. Or with overhead lighting. Or when you have just woken up. Or when you have not gotten enough sleep. (Or before you have applied mascara, obviously.)
There is a selfie sweet spot, taken from slightly above, your face turned slightly to the side, not full frontal, not in perfect profile. You realize that all of your latest selfies are the same (and if you have noticed, so have the people you want to impress with images of your face), so you try some new angles, chin tilted now slightly down, now slightly up. You feel silly, a vain, aging fool trying to capture the ideal vision of yourself that lives some magical where between your memory and the mirror. You delete them all and realize the only one you like is the same old selfie. Still, you mostly like your own face, so you post it. Ah well.
