A River in Africa

A River in Africa

The idea of how you see yourself (both in the physical and personal arenas) versus how others see you has always been perplexing to me.  And I am reminded of the difference in perception repeatedly when I see a picture of myself.  It is sort of like seeing yourself in a fun house mirror — it is just not right.  As I move from mirror to mirror, it is distorted in so many different ways, and every time it just doesn't capture the essence of who I am.  (Except when it makes me tall and willowy. Right on. Right on. Right on.)  How the camera sees you is some kind of bad witchcraft.  Cell phone pictures are even worse. 


Witchery.

Everybody else looks normal, but, sadly, I do not.  There are a million things wrong.  My hair is too blond, I’m too fat, my nose is huge, my posture is poor, I have wrinkles by my eyes, my face is shiny.  The whining can go on for some time – until I delete the picture (Phew!  Disaster averted.).

In short, I am just not as attractive as I thought!  I start looking around for someone to blame.  Someone (or some THING) must be responsible for this obvious distortion of my appearance.  The camera, the photographer, the lighting, my make-up, your make-up, my dog, my children, your children, too much alcohol, too little alcohol, the media, aliens, Oprah, the president.  All fair game. The responsibility expands when a cell phone is involved.  That is when the true conspiracy theories take root. Someone needs to take the hit for my less than satisfactory showing.

(Of course, when the picture turns out stunning, then it is all good.)

I ask my husband, “Am I really that fat?” “I probably shouldn’t wear that dress again, huh?” “Is that how I really look?”   He is a wiley and smart man.  He says “no” to everything.  It is sort of funny (and mean) if I corner him though.  I don’t do that very often because it might destroy me — or the me that I think I am.  I won’t even talk about it here, because that is risky.  Honesty usually involves the truth.  Not what I am shopping for.

My family and I have adopted a way to pose for pictures that we learned from a budding model on America’s Top Model.  One might think you can’t learn a thing from reality TV, but au contraire. This is how you do it:  You smile, but not so hard that it crinkles your eyes.  And you tip your head back a bit, but not so much that it is a nostril shot.  And you open your mouth and laugh like you are at a garden party on the East Coast.  Don’t really laugh, or it all goes to hell and you look like yourself.  That is what we are trying to avoid.  It works, I tell you.   I’m not sure if our sage-advice-giving-gaunt-18 year old model won.  She should have won based on this life changing tip she gave us.  What does Tyra Banks know anyway? She is mean and flaw-less. And probably honest — just what we don't want.

More and more I am beginning to realize that this might be me -- the great pictures and the not so great ones.  Really me.  This may be what I really look like.  I can say that this doesn’t sit well with my psyche.  I tend to want to dismiss this approach.  Vanity is that friend you didn’t invite to the photo shoot, but keeps turning up like Where’s Waldo. 

Now, with all my wisdom gained from aging, I’ve learned not to look too closely at myself in photos.  I move them in front of my face quickly, in sort of blur, and say to myself, “huh, that’s not too bad”.  It helps that I have to wear glasses (but only sometimes, Vanity doesn’t let me do it too often) because then everything is naturally blurry.

I am trying to cope with this “other-me” and grow from it.  It is not easy.  I have attempted to try to accept these “photos” of myself.  Embrace them.  It is difficult because if I do not destroy them, they are always in the back of my head.  I am like the Terminator, “I’ll be back, bad picture, to destroy you”.  I read that as you age, you begin to accept yourself as you are.  Uh huh, not working.  I have tried over and over, but that is a bitter pill that only oldER ladies have to swallow. My daughter says I am one of them now, but soon she will be moving out and then I can embrace my hot dellusion of myself once again.  

There, there, my precious. The young and flawless one is gone.

Denial is a river in Africa, so they tell me.  I’ve never seen it.  But I’ve heard it is big and wide and full of crap.  It sounds vaguely familiar.