Alina: The culture of writing blogs requires that you support your text with a couple of photos. This is a part of our wiring – we prefer pictures. When we started writing our blog, we noticed an interesting phenomenon – the photos of women that were ‘coming of age’ on photo stocks. Or rather, the absence of those photos. Curious, isn’t it?
I can probably predict your reaction. I am sure that most of you would think straight away: “What are you talking about? We see a lot of women of mature age on TV, in social media and lately even in advertising.” Except, you and I are not that ‘mature’ yet! 🙂 So, then, what are we talking about?
At the beginning we too assumed that it would be easy to find pictures that show women like us. But what does that actually mean – ‘women like us’? We started going through our own photos and we found it difficult to find photos that we liked, photos that would reflect our optimism and our wisdom (hopefully 🙂 ). Photos where we would simply like the way we looked. And this is not because we are gloomy or unattractive 🙂 people. For some reason most photos or videos (our first idea was to have a video blog) didn’t satisfy us – there was always something wrong with the lighting, an angle, or the face. It wasn’t just difficult. It was almost impossible! At first we were surprised and then started thinking: ‘why is that?’ Step by step we untangled this ball of emotions and reactions and came to the source of our dilemma – every time the image was unconsciously compared with the mental picture of us from previous times.
Lara: I seldom like my photos. There is always something wrong. But I’ve noticed that when I look at my ‘unliked’ pictures a few years later, I almost always think: “Actually I looked good!” I was 30, when I noticed it for the first time. And, as it keeps happening on a regular basis I know now – if I don’t like the way I look in a photo, I simply need to wait for a couple of years. 🙂
Alina: It looks like at some point we’ve created an ideal image of ourselves. And all following images are filtered to match this ideal, which they almost never do. Surprise, surprise!
This discovery was a revelation, and we plunged into social media to see the profile photos of our girlfriends and female acquaintances of our age group. And this is what we have discovered.
The photos of women, who run their business through social media, often were a masterpiece, carefully staged by a professional photographer with the involvement of a stylist, a makeup artist, and possibly Photoshop professional at the end.
Some photos had special effects like deep shadows or were slightly out of focus, or it was a group photo with family and friends where you couldn’t see the profile owner properly.
Other photos were taken during a formal event (a wedding or an opening night) reflecting hours and hours of preparation invested in the outfit and makeup. In other words – a well-planned impact.
We saw a lot of old-time pictures, sometimes from youth or childhood, where a person can be recognised only by their parents or classmates.
Some profile photos had no face at all …
Suddenly it became apparent to us that these women, our friends and social acquaintances, start hiding themselves. Hiding – maybe unknowingly – behind shadows, makeup, other people… And their faces are disappearing little by little…
Me – Version 5.0: Changes. They happen whether we like it or not. Even if we try to avoid them at all costs.
At some point we put so much effort into creating the image we currently have. And it has been giving us a comfortable sense of ‘self’ and the feeling of ‘hitting the mark’ perfectly. So, now we are passionately determined, almost desperate, to keep this self-reflecting image frozen forever.
One of the attributes of youth is the anticipation of change, curiosity and eagerness for what lies ahead. So, when thoughts about the future cease being exciting and the changes are not welcomed anymore – isn’t this in fact a sign of getting old?
PS. After writing this blog and realising that we needed to add our photos, we asked a professional photographer Nadi Bird to take our pictures and make sure that we look good! 🙂
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