The Fear of Becoming Someone Different from My Photo

Over the past few years, I have been blessed with opportunities to appear in the media and give lectures. Occasionally, I am asked to provide a photo, and each time, I submit the same one I use for my notebook and X icons.
It is a cropped family photo taken during my child's Shichi-Go-San ceremony, and it has been three years since it was taken. The me in the photo has less visible laugh lines than the current me, and since it was taken by a professional, it looks better than the real thing.
When I think back to my childhood, I remember being startled several times by the difference between the promotional photos of politicians or celebrities and their actual appearance. Although I didn't intend for it to happen, I never thought I would end up doing the same thing.
Since becoming a parent, photos are no longer things I take of myself, but things I take of my child. Even if I am in them, I am usually attached to my child, so they are not suitable as a recent photo of myself. When it comes to photos where I am clearly visible, they are almost exclusively from family events. Since I have no motivation to go out of my way to take a photo of just myself, the current situation is that I am just lazily reusing a photo from several years ago.
Although there is no malicious intent, I do feel a sense of guilt about continuing to use an old photo.
When someone says, 'You've been using the same photo for a long time (laughs),' I feel annoyed, but at the same time, I also feel like I am deceiving the public. I even wonder if, when we meet in person, the other person might feel that same 'startled' sensation I felt as a child.
It's a hassle and a waste of money, so I will likely continue to use the same photo until the next event photo shoot, but I secretly feel a sense of terror about becoming someone different from my photo.

Layered Complexes

As some might guess from the fact that I am writing about such trivial things, I have quite a complex about my own face. Part of it is that I don't like my original face, and for the past few years, I have been feeling sad every day as I discover progressing signs of aging.
At the same time, I also feel a complex about my own mentality, which obsesses over superficial things like my face.While drowning in the wave of lookism, there is also a part of me that is looking at myself drowning in that wave with cold eyes.It's not like there's anything particularly good about looking 'glammed up,' and conversely, it's not like I suffer any major disadvantages just because I'm not wearing makeup. Yet, I think about how ridiculous I am for wearing makeup every day and having my mood go up or down based on how it turns out.

The current me isn't called ugly when passing by, nor am I stared at because I am beautiful. Of course, if I stand next to a young person, my flaws stand out helplessly, but I think I have an ordinary face that you wouldn't notice if I were among people of my own age.
Sometimes I get comments like, 'An ugly woman/middle-aged woman like you wouldn't be secretly filmed,' and other times I get comments like, 'You're being used as a token because you're neat and tidy.' I think evaluations of beauty and ugliness fluctuate based on the preferences, age, and awareness of the person evaluating me, and I don't have any particular thoughts about the evaluations themselves from people I don't know well.
However, even though I don't make a living with my face, I feel a sense of emptiness when people say this or that about it.It is empty that the meaning and value of my words and opinions could be changed by my beauty or ugliness.The images taken during interviews are sometimes used in thumbnails or articles, and those images are often retouched. Since it is professional work, it is not processed to the point where you wouldn't know who it is. However, as someone who looks at my own face every day, I can clearly tell that they have made me look younger and neater than I am in reality.

I feel my own inadequacy, not because I was beautifully processed, but because my words wouldn't be listened to if I weren't beautifully processed.And I also wonder if the same processing would be done if I were a man.Of course, this might just be me overthinking it, and perhaps these days, images used for thumbnails are beautified in the same way regardless of age or gender. If the opinions of an amateur like me are to be heard, there is no doubt that it is an 'advantage' to have it beautifully processed to the extent that it is not fraud.
In the first place, before talking about processing, one might say, 'You're already deceiving people with your own makeup!' That is true; it is a fact that I am 'cooking' with makeup rather than presenting myself as raw material. Being processed on top of that feels like having seasoning added to a dish that hasn't had its flavor finalized.
I understand that adding seasoning can make it taste better and that there are benefits to it. Even so, every time I see myself looking better than the real thing in a photo, terror, guilt, and inferiority swirl in my heart.