Pop a Hip, Suck it In, Flex
archived post - 2020
I've been taking pictures of myself since before I got my first camera.
It all started as a younger me walking around my neighborhood and posing with flowers in front of a cell phone (obviously being proactive and shooting the cover of the pop album I would surely write one day...I only wish I was kidding). As time went on and I became an "actual" photographer, this silly practice grew into the art of self-portraiture. In my high school photography classes, I established my niche as the girl who could take pretty decent self-portraits (and perhaps this was because when inspiration struck, the quickest way to bring it to reality was to do it myself, rather than wait for a friend to drive across town to model). By now, I've determined that self-portraiture is my preferred method of artful communication; I get lost in it, I feel immersed in the process and the intent of my presentation; and this is where I absolutely could launch into a full-length blog post about all the reasons I love self-portraiture.
But that's not what I want to talk about right now.
For the past several years, I've had this Instagram account that I've used as a platform to get my thoughts and my art out there. It's been fun; it represents a side of me that a lot of people in my life don't usually get to see, the artsy side that isn't always doing homework or headed to a meeting or at practice. Of course, a sort of byproduct of having a photography Instagram is that, especially this past spring and summer, I've started looking at social media a lot more than I used to. I scroll through other photography accounts, I admire travel photos, I draw inspiration from other people's work...and these are all positive things, until they're not.
I've noticed that there are also these subtly dangerous thoughts that creep into my mind, the ones that can so easily dominate the way we feel about ourselves and about others because we often don't even notice them lurking. It starts with the "wow, I want to take photos like hers," the, "I wish I could travel like she can," and the, "I'd love to have her sense of style." And then it somehow escalates to the quietly damaging, "I want to look like that," and finally the all consuming,
I want her body
The frightening thing about all of those words is that we usually don't even see them as problematic until we really stop and think about it. We follow influencers, fitness accounts, lifestyle bloggers, the like. We start new routines, dedicate ourselves to diets, and set goals. And these are all things that we view as healthy, things that ARE indeed healthy when appropriately practiced. But see, there is a very fine line (that most of us walk, if we don't cross) that separates the practice of a positive lifestyle and a toxic one. There is a difference between striving for health and fitness, and idolizing a body that's not ours. Between wanting to be the best version of ourselves (physically and mentally), and concluding that, by comparison, we are simply not good enough. Between having goals and having doubts.
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The thing about social media is that it is very carefully curated, and understandably so. A person won't show their worst days just alike an artist won't show their worst work, and that's fine. But for whatever reason, the average consumer brain does not acknowledge that fact; there's a disconnect. On the internet, if they're smiling, they must be happy. If their lighting is great, their life must be too. If they've got a great body, they must be healthy. If they're traveling the world, they must have everything they need at home.
Now, to our credit, we eventually snap ourselves back to reality, and we remind ourselves that lives on social media are indeed those carefully curated versions of the truth, that Instagram posts represent the highs and seldom the lows, and that especially when it comes to self-portraiture, the days of #nofilter are long gone. But by the time we realize all that, we've already made the fatal comparison, and, at least subconsciously, the damage has been done.
These two pictures were taken about four months ago, within moments of each other.
Generally speaking, when you spend your time simultaneously in front of and "behind" the camera, you see a whole lot of yourself. In an effort to tell the right story with your eyes and your expression and your body language, you take about thirty to fifty pictures, varying each one, and you decide that you only really got it right in a handful of them. You twist your torso and angle your shoulders and wiggle your eyebrows until your body and face look exactly how you want them to. It's different from your run-of-the-mill photoshoot. Suddenly, you become shockingly hyper-critical of everything about yourself, because the product of the shoot is no longer just your art...it's you.
It's kind of crazy, how intensely I contemplated posting these two photos. As you could imagine, the one on the right: totally cool with it, happy with the picture, could post it without a thought, literally...because alone, it means nothing. The picture on the left though, that's the one I struggled with. It shows my body how it is, not how I want it to be. And even though I knew the point of the shoot was to be transparent about the difference between what I look like when I breathe and what I look like when I take a photo, I still found myself searching for reasons to be inauthentic, trying to convince myself that it would mean the same thing if I switched the order of the photos so the first one people saw was the one where I thought I looked best, the one that looked more like her body, not mine. And that scared me, because in it I recognized a reflection of how I've actually let myself start viewing myself.
And what scared me even more was the realization that I was certainly only one of the very many men and women who privately struggle with self-image, largely, if not solely due to the unrealistic standards the media-consumer mindset has placed upon them. And I don't want you to misunderstand what I'm trying to say here; I'm not placing blame. I'm not claiming that social media is toxic and should not exist. I'm not saying that Photoshop is manipulative or that filters are for fakes. Saying all that would make me wildly hypocritical. I am merely saying that we need to stop eating up media without recognizing that it is not entirely real, and that it is often far from it. Bodies are not perfect. Clothes are expensive, and plane tickets are more so. And life certainly does not have any filters.
In truth, it is a very good thing to dream and make plans to bring those dreams into reality, so long as that reality is your own, not one you think you can never have.
And it is a very good thing to strive to be the best version of yourself, so long as the person you're striving to be is indeed you, not somebody else.