The man in this illustration is actually me.
Otherwise, illustration becomes a profanity-laced experience in frustration. 3 One must know – and accept – their artistic limits. I’m focusing on white people here because it’s easier to illustrate the, um, hair issue. You don’t believe me? Uncovering our natural selves And then I tell you to click and read them anyway… for additional, slightly off topic but still interesting stuff. Note: Always click on these → 2 I have a problem leaving anything out, but out of consideration for my readers, who are already going above and beyond with these long articles, I tuck some of my thoughts away. The woman had been right…the guys were looking rather unhealthy. 1 And doing a worse job of covering things up. But the more I considered the issue, the more I realized that I was wrong: the men were actually altering their appearances much more than the women. My point had been that the men were more “natural,” and by extension, perhaps, more honest. Here’s the fascinating part: the woman at the reunion had been managing her “look” for so long that it was, in her mind, her actual appearance.īut the conversation made me think. New topic of conversation quickly turned to. Would any of you be willing to come to this reunion without wearing any makeup or hair coloring?” “You know,” I said, “most of the guys haven’t done anything besides shave before showing up here. One of the women remarked that most of the guys had let themselves go, while the women were looking pretty good.įeeling a bit contrary (and bored, since it was my wife’s reunion), I decided to pierce that bubble. Mind you, this was a 30-year reunion, so time had definitely been marching on. I was at a high school class reunion once, sitting at a table with three women. We filter ourselves – virtually and in reality – for so much of our lives that we often forget what’s underneath. “As we really are” is a precarious proposition for our fragile psyches. Is it any wonder that filters are popular for selfie images? We can’t have the world seeing us as we really are, can we? They need to see us as we imagine ourselves to be. Shattering illusions is painful and best avoided whenever possible. You see, we all maintain an illusion of what we think we look like. so at bedtime I’m ready for bed.) I’ll often leave off the bathroom light as I brush my teeth, relying on a little light leaking in from the hall. I’m not at my best in the evening before bed – I’m tired, mentally brittle, and focused on the sweet release that sleeping will give me from my overactive thought processes. Or, have you ever intentionally not looked in a mirror that is right in front of you, just because you weren’t up to dealing with the negative thoughts? It’s a trick of lighting of course, but it’s dismaying how much of an impact looking in the “wrong” mirror can have on your day. that mirror (you know the one) where every side seems to be your bad side. Mirror, mirrorĭo you have a favorite mirror? You know, a mirror where you think you look like your real self. We can remove at least some of that judgment from our reflections with – appropriately enough – some self-reflection. How harshly do you judge your own features? How much of your body from the neck up do you try to hide under a comb-over or makeup? We are the only animal that that is obsessively focused on the imagined imperfections of our faces, and it’s not a natural thing. But look in the mirror I do, and often shake my head at what I see there. We wouldn’t put up with a person disparaging our looks every time we glance at them, but we are completely OK with doing it to ourselves. A mirror is a device that we can’t avoid looking at dozens of times a day, but it passes back judgment without fail.