My best friend, who we’ll call JDS for now, is a photographer. He’s also one of a handful of people that I can count on to tell me the truth when my thinking is skewed.
One area where my thinking is often skewed is in my self-image. As my psychiatrist once put it, I am short of stature and overweight. Over the years, people that I trust have told me that I should get a bust reduction, that I should get my eyebrows waxed, that I have too much hair in the wrong spots. All of this means that I will never again pose happily in a bathing suit like I did in this picture, not even if I have water wings. Because my body is not right.
JDS and I have long had a running discussion about what beauty really is. Is it in a person’s heart? Their soul? Their body? I believe that I have a good heart and soul… but I rarely look in the mirror and see beauty.
Today we had a chat about the pros and cons of using Photoshop to make a person look “better” in a photograph. You know, remove unwanted blemishes and facial hair and whatnot. That’s when my famous black-and-white thinking kicked in.
If the way I look in a photograph isn’t good enough, how could I possibly look good enough in person? If a person doesn’t want me based on my photograph, how could they possibly want me in real life? (I am censoring myself here. JDS will remember this portion of the conversation differently.)
The next thought was that no matter how much I cleaned up a photograph of myself in Photoshop, the person I actually am would not change. I would still look the same way I always have in real life.
And then I got scared. Because what if what I’m trying to do here, taking action as if I weren’t ill, is no different? What if no matter what image I project to the outside world, I will remain just as sick as I’ve always been?
Am I just trying to Photoshop my life?
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No matter how good or bad you look in a still photo- that isn’t what you look like in real life! We are not two dimensional! We aren’t even only three dimensional! Animated, with emotion and depth, you are more beautiful than Photoshop could ever make you.
I think the same goes with your writing. Be brutally honest. To me, even the darkest, ugliest parts of someone are beautiful, if they’re real.
Thank you so much, Robin. You always saw my inner beauty… now I have to learn to see it for myself.