The Very Narcissistic Post

I stumbled upon this quote today...

"A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely." -Roald Dahl

Yes, but self-image is such a sticky, strange and interesting matter.

Have you ever taken a picture of someone and thought it was really great, only to show it to them and get a horrified look? I find that if I take pictures of a person and ask him/her to choose the best one, it's not at all the picture that I would have picked.

Cole really seemed to love this picture that I took of him, but I think it lacks the essential Cole-ness that I love about him. I can see why he likes it, but I have lots of other favorites that would go before this one.

But that's just the way it goes, when it comes to appearances. Everything is so subjective. As far back as I can remember, the days when I think my hair looks atrocious (generally, days when I didn't wash it and had to figure out some way to style it dry) are the same days that people compliment my hair and say, "Whatever you did today, it looks great."

Sometimes when I feel like I have made myself look particularly good, I will take a self-portrait. Hands-down, the photos end up looking terrible. If I think I look vaguely sexy in the mirror, I look like a hag in the resulting pictures. I have bad vision but not necessarily wonky eyes, but in pictures I always think I think vaguely cross-eyed. Maybe it's because I'm trying to look straight into the lens, or maybe I actually have wonky eyes. I wouldn't be shocked if the latter was true.

Okay, the eyes are wonky (and the picture is blurry), but can we take a second to acknowledge that they are a lovely, lovely shade of teal in this picture? I didn't futz with the color or anything.

I came across this article today on Jezebel, and when I looked through the scans from the "Practical Character Reader," I was struck by this picture in particular.

Because she reminds me of this person (and honestly, I cannot find a picture on Facebook that illustrates just how bad my profile really looks... just trust me, here):

Seriously, people, what is up with that forehead? It looks like my hair is a wig! (Incidentally, my friend Brent took this picture-- and he loves it. What?)

However, I am tickled to find out that this is apparently a type. Okay, it's a bad-type type, but it's a type! I am not alone in having this terrible profile-- there it is in a book, c. 1902. I feel so much better about it now. Haha.

I think the only thing we can really do is try to look our most presentable, whatever that means. Yesterday I wore a patterned purple TJ Maxx dress cinched with a pleather belt. I attempted to straighten my hair but felt like it ended up looking really puffy. But people took note that I was trying to look good. One co-worker said that I looked like an editor at Vogue, and asked what designer label my dress was. I realized-- just trying to pull a look together turns out to be your personal style, for better or worse. Even if you feel like you've failed, you just have to find the inner confidence to "make it work," as Tim Gunn would say.

Was I making it work? Did I even look like this in real life? I don't know, but at least I tried. And thank goodness my hairline doesn't look so far back from the front.

What was the point of this post? I can't even remember. Oh yeah, I guess it's just that I really liked that Roald Dahl quote. And I think that what I like best in a picture of me is seeing my personality shine through. Of course, I'd like to look sexy and pretty and thin and stylish, but that's not what defines me. Like it or not, I'm a "personality" girl, and without that essential element, it's just not a good picture of me.

Recently on "The Real Housewives of NJ," Jacqueline took her 17-year-old daughter to a photo-session with a portrait photographer. Jacqueline kept saying to her daughter, "You don't have to be so uncomfortable. You look beautiful. I want you to be comfortable with your body." Finally, the daughter stormed off, crying, "I AM comfortable with my body!" (Sure.) But at the end of the session the daughter rejected all of the beautiful pictures, saying that they were ugly. It's really sad, the way that people are so, so self-critical. It makes me want to turn around and embrace every bad picture of me (thanks to Facebook, I have many bad pictures of myself at hand), if only because I know that when I am older, I will only wish that I could look so young, weird forehead or not. I guess I try to anticipate my craggy old self, so that I can appreciate my now-self more. Haha.

This is one of my current favorite pictures of myself. I look like I'm having fun. and that's not something you can buy at Sephora, folks.

This version isn't quite as attractive, but I'm using it on my Facebook and my Twitter right now (hence the slight color futz). I like that I look kind of silly and smug in it (like I have a secret). When I smile with a closed mouth I look more like my dad, and I love when he makes faces like this one. I also used to make this face a lot when I was a kid, so it's kind of a throwback, for me. (When I showed it to Cole, he said, "I like it, but it's not my favorite.")

See? I learned that face from the master.

So is there a science to beauty and handsomeness? Maybe, but it's all in the eye of the beholder.

"A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely." -Roald Dahl

It isn't easy to be a person who ascribes to those words, especially when looking at oneself. If you have good thoughts about your own appearance and the appearance of others, I think that counts as double sunbeams.

Double mitzvah! Party it up. Take a half day.