It has been a common gripe by even the slimmest women TV presenters down the years. On screen, they appear a lot heavier than they are. Now scientists have discovered that television really does add pounds to a woman’s figure, particularly at the neck and waist.

According to Gizmodo, the focal length of a camera can flatten out your features, which can make you look a little bit bigger. Then, of course, there’s barrel distortion, which is when a camera lens can cause straight lines to appear curved. This has the effect of plumping you up, making you look, well, kind of fatter.

You might be glad to find out that cameras really do add 10 pounds: According to Gizmodo, the focal length of a camera (which is the distance between the center of a lens and its focus) can flatten out your features, making you look a little bit larger.

Jasmine said that “if the mirrors are not mounted properly, every single mirror in each dressing room is going to be different” and claimed that “a normal mirror actually makes you look five to 10 pounds heavier than you do in real life.” But physics experts tell NBC News that’s not true: Regular, flat mirrors shouldn’ …

Women really do look fatter on television, while men look more hunky, say researchers at the University of Liverpool. They investigated differences between 2D images such as TV pictures and 3D images produced using stereoscopic cameras.

Does the camera make you look fatter? No, a camera doesn’t specifically make you look fat. But it can actually make you different in a few different ways. The lens used on the camera will have an effect on the apparent perspective of the subject.

One big reason why you don’t look your best in photos is that you become hyper aware of yourself and as a result, you pose your body in a stiff and awkward position! Fix this by having something to interact with like a cup, phone or bag to hold, sunglasses to put on or a sleeve to adjust.

Does it only apply … Nearly everyone has heard the old saying that cameras—particularly TV cameras—”add ten pounds” to their subjects. Some people use it as a convenient excuse for those (real) ten extra pounds, but others believe that this claim has actual technical merit.

More realistically, the explanation for the 10 extra pounds lies behind our eyes. For one, cameras have varying focal lengths, and most consumer cameras will slightly distort people in an image depending on where they are standing and how the photographer is holding the camera.

Video meant for the TV screen, however, isn’t shot in the same way. Both NTSC and PAL pixels are rectangular (or non-square), and I was told that this is the reason why people look wider on TV.

“Your eyes are placed on your face horizontally, so you get a ‘widescreen’ view of the world,” he said. “TV—specifically, NTSC—is nearly square (4:3), so you are significantly modifying your view of the world, not just by ‘zooming in’ and isolating the TV in your view, but also by changing your entire perspective.”