Is that actually what I look like?

When I take pictures of my body using my iPhone X camera, is that an accurate representation of what I look like to others? Or is the camera making me look different

Well for a start, you probably aren't just a few inches tall.

Look in a mirror - if the camera matched the mirror, then yes. Cell phone cameras do manipulate images (ok, technically every digital picture is manipulated) and so settings can adjust the picture to make you look better (or what Apple thinks is better)

If the camera is less than about 6ft or two metres from you, either directly or using a mirror at least one metre away, the image will have some level of perspective distortion.

That makes things nearer the centre of the image look larger and out of proportion, while shrinking or hiding features at the sides of your face or body.

For an extreme example, try taking a photo of your face with the camera barely a foot away.

It's accurate. You really are that ugly.

Short answer is that the wide-angle lens used in all smartphones has a very high level of barrel distortion which makes people's facial features look very ugly. This is why you should never photograph someone using a wide-angle lens (i.e. A smartphone).

Here's a link showing how ugly someone can look simply by using a wide-angle lens: For reference, the lens in your phone is about 24~28mm.

When you use a lens in the 85~200mm range (equivalent in 35mm format), the perspective is no longer being stretched out like it is when you use a wide-angle lens. In fact, the perspective is being compressed which results in an image that shows you to be more attractive than you really are.

So if you want to look even better than you do in real life, just use a real camera and put down the phone which is making you look like you've hideous.

What you see from a mirror is as close to reality as you can get.

Stand in front of a large mirror with a sibling or a friend and compare what you see when looking directly at each other and what you see reflected from the mirror.
The only incorrect detail of what the mirror shows
is that you and the other person will look "backwards".

What I Can't Understand is Why young people don't discover this for themselves.
When I was a kid, it was one of the first things I learned passively.
No one needed to point it out or answer any questions --- it was Just Plain OBVIOUS.

Representation yes. More or less, you look like that. Accurate? The camera never takes exactly as what our eyes can see. Never did, never will.

Get over yourself.

Mostly alike

DCM5150 is wrong, as a mirror image is reversed so that is not how people see you or how you look to others. Cameras can reverse image as well depending on how good they are the also see you from only one angle with a fixed lightning situation, the human brain does a LOT of process on its images so you can't tell - it will be close but not 100% exact - eg I'm Red / Green colour blind and these colours are only brain perceptions for me so I would see you differently to anther person due to skin tone and other issues. Problems is this is the same for everyone so you can never tell how someone see and perceives something they see.