some talk about drapes...

Since my last post was hella long, this one is going to be, uh, shorter. I'm not really interested in disecting all the issues surrounding the unrealistic portrayal of women in the beauty and magazine industry (both in the models themselves and the overuse of image editing) because that's been done (and done, and done). Instead, I'd like to briefly discuss just how powerful visual images have on our sense of self. Well, I'd like to discuss how images have a powerful effect on my sense of self.

I don't have some fancy statistic to tell you how many times a day we see images or reflections of ourself, but I can say that it's a heckofalot more times than we did 50, 100 and 500 years ago. The invention of the mirror, the camera and now the digital camera has made it possible for us to see what we look like virtually any minute of the day. At one point in time the only way to see your reflection was to look in a pool of water. Back then it's logical that you wouldn't have a good grip on what you looked like. Now we have mirrors in several rooms of the house, albums upon albums of printed images of our face from the time we're born, and hundreds it not thousands of photos of us on facebook. We are oversaturated with images of ourselves.

But this means that we're also oversaturated with images of other people, and this has a profound effect on what we expect to see when we pass a mirror. Meaning, do you expect to see yourself, or are you expecting to see something else? Because chances are, the images you're seeing of others don't even come close to what you look like since they are likely to be thinner/whiter/smoother/younger/tanner/taller than you.

Here's my real life example. I was born with a rare gene mutation that causes a pigment variation in my skin and hair. (read: I'm a redhead.) I was born with a full head of bright orange hair, and while I don't have textured curls or a face full of freckles, believe me when I say I am very much a redhead in almost every sense. Being a redhead is sort of cool, actually. Sure I got teased as a kid and require more anesthetic at the dentist, but I have the rarest hair color in the world and people notice it. I get asked about once a month if my hair color is natural, which is then followed by some glowing compliment about how beautiful it is. People pay hundreds of dollars to get what I have naturally. It is absolutely part of who I am and I wouldn't trade it for the world.

But....

I am totally surprised when I look in the mirror every. single. time. When I imagine myself, I think I have brown hair. But I do not. My hair is the color of copper. It's not a variation of brown, it's a variation of orange. My hair has been pretty much the same color for all my twenty some years and I've seen myself probably hundreds of thousands of times in mirrors and through pictures. I know that I'm a redhead, but I expect to see brown hair when I look in the mirror. I don't know how to explain it, but I'm still somehow surprised by my hair color. I am convinced that being surrounded by brunettes explains why I somehow think I am a brunette.

I know you probably think I'm crazy, but I'm totally not. I'll leave you with this excerpt from "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston. I think it says it all.

Ah was wid dem white chillun so much till Ah didn’t know Ah wuzn’t white till Ah was round six years old. Wouldn’t have found it out then, but a man come long takin’ pictures and without askin’ anybody, Shelby, dat was de oldest boy, he told him to take us. Round a week later de man brought de picture for Mis’ Washburn to see and pay him which she did, then give us all a good lickin’.

So when we looked at depicture and everybody got pointed out there wasn’t nobody left except a real dark little girl with long hair standing by Eleanor. Dat’s where Ah wuz s’posed to be, but Ah couldn’t recognize dat dark child as me. So Ah ast, ‘where is me? Ah don’t see me.’

[...] Ah looked at de picture a long time and seen it was mah dress and mah hair so Ah said: ’Aw, aw! Ah’m colored!’