On Self-Perception
(Not the Deep Kind)
We’re not meant to look at ourselves this much.
Selfies, Zoom, gigabytes of storage space on our phones with random pictures, tongues out, leg kicked, OOTD, it’s too much.
We have to know our angles, hold our arms just so, chin tilted to lengthen, get the perfect distance so the image on our screen matches the image we hold in our minds of what we look like, because we’re constantly bombarded with what we look like.
We’re simply not meant to look at ourselves this much.
The lines on our foreheads, the wrinkles at the corner of our eyes, the softening jawline, and god forbid we examine too closely what’s below. (If you identify as female, then you know that others find your body fair game to critique because your image doesn’t match what they demand your image be.)
Every now and then, I do this challenge where I avoid mirrors. I rarely take selfies, so I just look at what I need: my teeth and gums as I brush. My pupil as I pop in a contact lens. My cheek to ensure my sunscreen is rubbed in. But I won’t take in the whole. I refuse to absorb the reflected image.
If there’s lint on my backside, that’s a you-standing-behind me problem, because I’m not checking.
It’s incredibly empowering to walk through life without that fretful image of fluffing your hair, smoothing your shirt front, sucking in your core to make that image match what your mind remembers, whether correct or not. I remember a picture someone took of me smiling, remembering a happy moment. I liked that one. I have a memory of me in motion, sticking my finger in a dinosaur statue’s nose, my arm long and capable. Snapshots of images I’ve approved as “me” make up my whole, and I don’t want to give a mirror or a selfie or an adjusted Zoom window the power to destroy that. That memory of me is mine. That belief in who I am is mine.
Our spirits, our selves are not meant for album upon digital album of random takes until we get that One Perfect Selfie. Our reflections should come from the smile on a loved one’s face when we enter the room, a wavering image on the surface of water, a breeze ruffling our clothes. A long grey shadow accompanying us as we walk towards a new adventure.
Here lies our true selves, who we believe we are, who we hope those we let into our lives perceive us to be, not the filtered, digitized, judged reflection of a stranger’s expectation on beauty that we keep in our pockets, endlessly scrolling to find The Right One. The Golden Ratio of beauty forgets Salvador Dali’s melting clocks fit the mathematical formula. Why then, should my gravity-pulled menopausal self not compute?
I don’t have a clever ending, but to say that I must end this as I have to get on a Zoom call and I am going to turn off self-view so my eyes don’t track endlessly to my frustrating square in the Brady Bunch display, because we’re not meant to look at ourselves this much.