A button of mine got triggered recently and I got to see how much of a trigger it has.
I am not a pretty person. I am a person that can be pretty. I can also look bad, weird, etc. I like the fact that I can look like many things. A part of my personality that I like the most is my silly side. It is also a part of my personality that gets me in trouble with “normal” people.
For a long time I collected pictures of myself to just get used to how I looked, to get familiar with it so that I didn’t cringe when I saw myself in a picture. I figure it is like hearing your voice on a recording, pictures just look wrong and it is so easy to spot the things you don’t like about yourself. I can be very critical about myself so I put effort into being able to accept myself as I am.
My favorite pictures were ones where I was goofing off and making silly faces. To me, they showed my personality more than my physical body and there was more me there. Posed pictures where I look “nice” were rather empty of me-ness. They were fine for school and family portraits, I didn’t have a problem with them, but I did see them as limiting. They were only one slice of me and I wanted to get used to all of me.
I have never felt comfortable with people that didn’t want their picture taken because of how they look, or that they needed to primp for a photo, or freeze with a fake grin on their face. We don’t live our lives that way, why record it that way. I want my friends to fill my pictures with themselves. Taking flattering pictures is nice, it is much better to take a photo from a good angle than from one where things look distorted. But my favorite pictures are the ones that look the most like the personality of my friend, not the one where they look “pretty” or “nice”.
Since my silly face, which is very distored, is what I felt best showed my personality, I would put it on a lot for pictures. Once my mom took a picture and had it developed and here I was with a silly face and she hated that picture. She wanted me to be “pretty.” Every now and then this attitude of it being important how I looked would appear from her and I get shocked every time. She is very supportive and accepting of me and when these little things would show up, it would go right to my core and eat away at my self-esteem. It wouldn’t matter if I had 25 things that looked good if I had one thing that looked bad. All my attention would be on that one thing and I would feel horrible. Well, she sent me the picture she had taken of me being silly with a note on the back saying it cost her 75 cents to develop that picture and she never wants to spend that kind of money on a shot of me looking like this again. My reply was that she doesn’t get to take pictures of me again, ever. That way she will never be faced with needing to spend money on developing a picture of me she doesn’t like. I would send her pictures but she isn’t allowed to take any of her own. That was almost 20 years ago.
The pictures of me I dislike the most are the ones where I am trying to look pretty and there is some flaw, my chin is pulled back into my neck (my lack of chin is a big one)), my eyes look like demon eyes, my hair looks like crap, something doesn’t look good with my outfit, I am in a awkward pose. Worse yet are where parts of me that are what I consider the good parts are the parts that are the one flaw, like when my legs look fat, or my height works out unflatteringly.
I much prefer to be out of “pretty” on purpose. To be oddly twisted or draped weirdly over something or someone. To put on a weird face. To be in an awkward pose. One of my favorite facebook pictures is one where I have my head down and am resting my face on a waterbottle in my hand. People who know me would recognize me but it isn’t a picture that would make someone familiar with me. I think it looks great. It totally looks like me. Good, bad, indifferent. Nothing is standing out for the “pretty” and nothing is standing out for the “ugly,” it is just me.
I have a lot of pictures of the younger version of me. I am getting to a point where I am feeling a little uncomfortable with them. I am beginning to see the size I was and enjoyed as really skinny. I am seeing the hairstyles I loved so much that I still feel like I want today in the same way as others have labeled the 80s. I am seeing the outfits I was wearing as things I wouldn’t want to wear. I am good with them all being from that time and appropriate then but I need more pictures of me now, with what I like and want to be as I currently am. Those old pictures don’t fit the me of now no matter how wonderful there were for the me of then.
I do have the other side of me that when I ask if these pants make my butt look big, I really want to know the truth, especially if it is bad. It isn’t the trap that is normally associated with this sort of thing. But those are the times when I have the emotional triggers tightly locked up and can be rational about it. I won’t be devastated by being told I look bad because I am ready for it.
A so-called friend who I know has a bit of a thing for me (or at least did in the past) made fun of my 80s hair in my fb picture that I use for when I am feeling aggravated and out of sorts. His opinion should mean little to nothing to me but it really got under my skin. After stewing over it a little, I ended up writing him a rather blasting email telling him that if he can’t handle pictures of me that aren’t “pretty” he is welcome to leave. And if he ever crosses that line with me again, he will be removed. I have been able to handle being someone’s fantasy without a problem because it is in their head and has nothing to do with me. But when something comes back at me for not living up to the standards of their fantasy or they want more attention from me because of their attachment to the fantasy version of me, I don’t seem to be able to stand that.
My facebook picture is of my brain right now because I don’t feel comfortable having any of my other pictures showing. I wish I felt more like putting up a fuck you sort of picture but the vulnerable side is calling for a retreat and removing my sails from the winds that might do me harm.
I’ve gotten to the point that I really dislike having my picture taken as 99% of the time I look like an absolute dork. I’m not photogenic in the slightest, and what personality I have doesn’t come through in the slightest.
I like some of the ones you consider “dork.” I try hard to take great pride in my dorkiness because it is a lot of who I am. I love the one of you wearing the space hat and are in the middle of asking a question.
Your imp side shows when you wear Ensign Expendable.
The ones I have to remind myself that are showing a major side of me and I need to love are the ones where my mouth is open and I am talking. They may not look all that good but they do capture me the way I am most of the time. Talking.
Digital cameras have ruined pictures for me. No matter how I look in person, it’s impossible for me to get a really good shot on digital.
I used to do the same thing, regarding making faces for the camera, and encountered the same resistance from my mom. I like your reply!
I put the question to you what are you using for requirements of a good shot? For me, cameras capture something but not necessarily “reality.”
If you think you look good in person and can’t get a picture to look as good, then you are aiming for that “pretty” shot. If you can get a picture that radiates who you are out of it no matter if you look “pretty” or not, that is what I consider a good shot. A lot of times how you feel about how you look colors your opinion of what is a good shot.
How much of film pictures hid things that digital picture show is what constituted a good shot? How much of the digital settings show things in different proportions? Have you tried messing with those things?
Digital pictures just don’t really look like me. They capture a very flat, surface something that is neither pretty, in my opinion, nor shows my personality/energy. In fact, I’ve always felt digital pics weren’t as pretty precisely because they don’t show my essence that comes across in person. If a picture is “pretty” to most, yet only shows a flat, surface me, I don’t like it.
I do think I look good in person, but more because of my particular energy/vitality. Take that away, and most of me is gone. It’s similar to how both my grandmothers looked at their funerals – almost like totally different people. One, in particular, looked like a very handsome corpse, but nothing like her normal self. It was creepy and unpleasant to me. Other people remarked on this, in both cases. That’s one of the first things that made me realize that who we are, even including our physical appearance, lies so much more in our energy and essence than in the actual flesh.