On learning to love my chin

I have a pouchy chin. A big, soft, double chin. I’ve had it for a long time - even when I was in a smaller body.

And for a long time… I absolutely hated it. From the days of pouty selfies taken from above on a digital camera (hello, noughties university days), I’ve tried to hide it. Always look up for photos. Tongue on the roof of my mouth. Poking my head forward. Anything to get a more pronounced jawline, and hide that chin. 

Photos are the real challenge - candid photos, mid laugh, or a funny angle can really highlight it.  It even got to the point where, ahead of my wedding, I even considered having the fat in my chin frozen off. An expensive and painful procedure, just to get rid of part of my face.

I’ve even started wondering whether all those years of trying to pull my chin forward and away from my neck have affected how I hold my head. I already have plenty of posture and pain issues thanks to hypermobility; I probably don’t need to add “constantly pushing my head forward” to the mix.

How we look at ourselves vs. others

A few years ago I realised how much this part of my face connects me to the women in my family. We have a strong family resemblance: my mum, my grandma, my sister, my aunts and cousins. There are features I recognise across all of us, and my chin is part of that for me.

What struck me was that I could recognise echoes of the same features in women I love, without seeing anything wrong with them at all. I just saw their faces: familiar, expressive, completely theirs. Yet on myself, I’d isolated one small part and decided it needed fixing.

I realised how differently I was looking at myself. When I looked at those women, I saw a whole person. When I looked at a photograph of myself, I could reduce my entire face to one small area underneath my jaw.

There’s actually a name for some of this: “appearance monitoring”, or “body surveillance” – repeatedly checking and evaluating our bodies as though we’re looking at ourselves from the outside. Research links this kind of appearance monitoring with body shame and other poorer body-image outcomes.

The reframe

So I’ve been working on reframing it. Seeing it not as a flaw that I need to hide, but one part of ME. If I catch myself criticising it, I tell myself that it’s part of me, and something I inherited from the brilliant women in my family. It’s not something to cut out of my visual image. It’s part of me, and I don’t need to make myself smaller, smoother or more conventionally attractive in order to be worthy of love.

And when I look at photos, instead of zoning in on my chin, I remember how I felt in that moment - how happy I was, or who I was with. Because photos aren’t about looking perfect - they’re about  capturing memories. 

It’s also helped me to think less about how my body looks from the outside, and more about what it’s actually like to live in it. There’s some evidence that deliberately shifting attention towards what our bodies do, rather than how they look, can improve body appreciation and reduce self-objectification. In my case, there’s a very literal version of that: protecting my neck and keeping my body as comfortable and pain-free as possible matters considerably more than creating the illusion of a sharper jawline.

I don't think I have to love it every day

I still don't always love my chin.

Sometimes I'll see a photo and immediately wish it looked different. I still know exactly which angles make it less visible. I haven't transcended beauty standards and become completely indifferent to it.

But I'm trying to stop treating this part of my face as though it is an unfortunate mistake. It's my chin. It's the chin I laugh with. It's attached to the body I live my life in. And, wonderfully, it's part of a face that connects me to women I love.

That feels very different from telling myself I have to look in the mirror every morning and declare it beautiful. Maybe body acceptance isn't always learning to adore every inch of yourself - sometimes it's simply letting a part of your body belong.

So when I catch myself staring at a photo and zooming straight in on my chin, I'm trying to zoom back out again, to see my whole face. To remember what was happening when the photo was taken.

And occasionally to think: oh hello, Grandma.