Angles on the Truth

Vacation was wonderful. Absolutely the breath of air I needed. We spent four days concentrating on pure fun, and NO time moping over jobs, men, or anything else unpleasant.

I could write all about it, and post a ton of pictures of my niece and nephews, but I'm not going to. After all, a blog is just a prolonged exercise in personal vanity, so let's get right to the point and talk about ME.

Snapped some quick self-portraits while walking from the beach to the hotel.

The camera is bringing my self-image problem into sharp focus.



This is the me I see every time I look into a mirror; vacation sunburn aside. Overweight, sure, but still pretty. Mildly intriguing. This woman looks like she's actually thinking, maybe about to say something. And check out the hair! Depending on your jollies it could be saying "I'm an outdoor girl who doesn't mind the wind" (8% true) or "I just had amazing sex." (negative 35% true)

It's a great photo. I like it enough to use in e-dating. Trouble is that it's ONE shot out of about twenty. The others weren't nearly as good.



Gods, what if people actually see me like this???? Big face, tiny eyes, shapeless dead-end hair, too foolish to wear sunscreen, strange crescent-shaped areas by nose, character-less eyebrows, thin lips, big yellow teeth, bad skin. I could be a character on Hee-Haw.

So which of these two people do my co-workers see? What about my boss? My students? My family? Interesting-looking men?

I'd love to generalize and say everyone takes good photos and bad photos. I could say these showed (shudder) the extremes of my "appearance range." I could maybe do that if I hadn't taken them about two minutes apart. I can't change that much in two minutes, can I?

And to complicate matters the only photos of myself that I ever liked have been taken by one person.

Me.

And I'm pretty damn good with a camera. Maybe I'm cheating somehow. It seems a little strange that no one else can catch this elusive Sharon on film.

So -- what if I post the good photo? Is that deceptive? Am I helping the poor guy set false expectations? Or am I overestimating the power of the first photo to begin with?

It seems like a minor thing, but at the heart it's all about expectations, truth, trust, honesty, coercion, and a host of ugly ethical thorny issues I should just leave alone.

The truth (OK, a truth) is that I have an overwhelming need to fall ethically in love. And don't ask me what that means, because I'm not totally sure myself. And what kind of freaking nonsense is that, when love is possibly the biggest lie of all? And why should a cynic even consider falling madly in love with anyone anyway?