New research from The Body Shop reveals British women spend an entire month of their lives snapping selfies
Have you ever spent an hour in front of the mirror, fruitlessly photographing yourself in order to snap the perfect selfie? Well, research can now reveal you are not alone.
The illusion that we just rolled out of bed and took the perfect picture has been shattered by the findings from The Body Shop, which revealed British women spend a staggering 753 hours of their lives taking, deleting, retaking and touching up their social media selfies (sorry lads).
The study also found the top five tricks women use to retouch their selfies to ensure they look their absolute best. These were: using soft mood lighting (51%), shooting from a downward angle (47%), adopting a slimming body pose (46%), using smartphone filters (37%) and ‘smizing’ - smiling with our eyes (29%).
And it turns out the way in which we beautify ourselves in selfies varies greatly between cities, with 56 per cent of Cardiff women using filters, 20 per cent of Southampton women favouring the ‘duck face’ and 63 per cent of Newcastle women opting for flattering lighting.
With the huge rise in popularity of social media sites and ‘dating’ (or rating) apps such as Tinder, it’s no wonder us girls are feeling under pressure to look our best online. However, at least now when we’re pulling our hair out because a two-hour photo shoot has yielded nothing but ugly, unflattering selfies, we can rest safe in the knowledge that we aren’t the only ones.
With all this happy snapping going on, maybe rethinking our ‘I just don’t have time to go to the gym’ excuse should be next on the agenda…