Ladies, if you don’t want to deal with the hassle and expense of cosmetic procedures to look younger in photos, I have good news. There are now countless apps and filters available to take years off your digital face, with just the touch of a button. In the past, only famous people, like Cher, Liberace, and Spuds MacKenzie, reaped the benefits of photo retouching, but these days that magic is available to middle-aged nobodies like you, too. Wrinkles, woes, and worries, be gone!

Here’s how to look like a million bucks:

1. First, know where to pose when taking a group photo. If there are more than two people, insist that you be in the middle. You must never, ever get stuck in the end position, a.k.a. the Fat-Arm Spot. “Wow, when did her arm become a side of beef?” people will exclaim when they see you on Facebook looking like a Green Bay Packer. I’ll tell you when—when you let Janice take the coveted middle position.

2. If photos are being snapped on someone else’s phone, immediately ask to see them so that you can delete the ones you don’t like. This may involve force. Think Sean Penn in the eighties.

3. If the photos were taken on your phone, relax, and only save the pictures that are flattering to you. Trash the rest. And, yes, it’s O.K. to post the photos where you look good and your friends don’t—but be careful. Revenge is a dish best served on Instagram.

4. There are many editing apps available for the iPhone, so be sure to pick one that’s highly rated. You may think that a free app is fine, but you are wrong. Anyone over forty needs the latest and greatest M.I.T. nerd technology. Besides, would you rather pay three dollars for an app that erases your forehead lines or three hundred dollars for Botox that erases your forehead lines?

5. The best filters to make your face look more youthful have names like “Soft Focus,” “Vaseline,” and “Just Had Cataract Surgery.” Stay away from any filter with a name like “Natural,” “Aging Gracefully,” or “God Thinks I’m Beautiful so I Don’t Give a Shit if You Do.”

6. If the filter isn’t doing the trick, you may want to use a feature called “healing.” This digital surgeon lets you erase lines, dark spots, and pimples from your face simply by swiping your finger across the screen. You can also erase entire people from the photo. If they comment, “What happened to me?” just answer, “I think that’s a question for your therapist, Megan.”

7. Do not use so many filters that your nose and/or other facial features appear to be missing. You don’t want to look like a spectre from another dimension in the group selfie from Girls’ Wine and Painting Night. Nor do you want to look like a Colombian drug lord who had plastic surgery in a veterinarian’s office. A good rule of thumb is, if you’re holding a newborn baby in a photo and you look like the one who just came out of the womb, remove a filter or two.

8. Finally, when you’re meeting someone in real life who has only seen your retouched photos online, be honest in advance. Come clean. Let him know that you’re a middle-aged feminist and don’t believe that women should subject their faces to fillers, serums, and peels just to fit into an outdated patriarchal beauty standard. Women should be loved for who they are, not what they look like. Then dim the lights, put on your beekeeper’s outfit, and take a new profile pic.