I don't know what happens to us incredibly social creatures when we have our photos taken that upsets the aesthetic fairy so much, but I'm confident that she sends evil monster things into digital cameras and pays personal visits to all the photomats (for them old school people that use 'em) so that when people look at photos of themselves, what they see is a sludge monster of doom. It's a phenomenon I've often noticed, even in childhood. Auntie B would clasp a brand new picture of herself, tittle nervously, “Look, ehehehehe, look how horrible I look!” And I would, and I'd consider carefully what to say next, because the Auntie B in the photo and the Auntie B holding it looked pretty much the same.
A word on the subject of tittling. It's annoying. It's that whispy, sickly illegitimate sibling of laughing that people spew out of their mouths when they are trying to cover up how deeply embarrassed they are. It's a defence mechanism that fools nobody, so I really hope that it makes the people doing it feel better about themselves.
They: I'd like a number 12.
Me: (Blank stare with automatic smile of uncertainty. There is no number 12.) Is the number 5 okay?
They: Oh! Oh! I mean I want a number 5, 12 pack. TITTLE!
Me: (Smiling because they are embarrassed and I don't want them to be) Certainly, what would you....
They: I just have 12 on the brain, I guess. TITTLE!
Me: That's understandable, ma'am. What would you like to....
They: My birthday is December 12th. TITTLE! (It's August)
Me: Happy Birthday ahead of time, ma'am. What would you like to dri...
They: I don't know what I'm going to do when I have my birthday on 12-12-12. TITTLE! (She'll probably accidentally order a number 12 all over again, and we will offer a number 5)
Me: (Rapidly so she doesn't interrupt me some more) It's fine, really, ma'am. DRINK?
Okay, back to photos now. This mania doesn't stop with aunts of questionable pulchritude, it moves on to the drop dead gorgeous cousin “Look at that! I'm such a dork!” Mother, “I hate pictures of myself.” Friends, “I look so weird.” Acquaintances “I wish somebody had warned me about that.” To me, they all looked like themselves, except I would agree that a single clump of hair standing straight up like that might have been averted with a little forewarning. I didn't know at the time how these normal people were transformed into hideous gorgons that only they could see as soon as the photo was developed, but I began to frown at impending cameras, hoping that this would make them feel shamed in what they had done to all those people. There are several pictures of me as a small child looking confused and frowning.
Mirrors, too, were in on the joke. The gorgeous cousin would adjust a strand of hair and observe “Oh, god, I'm so ugly.” Other, older figures would remark, more subtly, “I look just terrible without my makeup on.” My mother would often observe “I'm the ugly one” which was either a heinous lie, or someone (some thing?) had misled her. I began to suspect that, in the same way that there were people living in the television set acting out whatever video we put in (although I later decided that the people lived in the cassettes, and that's why it was so important to get the right cassette when you wanted something specific) there were people living behind the mirrors and photographs, pretending to be you whenever you looked at them.
Unlike several other illusions, this one didn't stop with infancy, it only got worse. One day I saw myself on camera, performing the childish activities that I had just performed not ten minutes before, and I looked nothing like what I expected. What was this gangly creature with the dorky hair running around in aunt M-'s backyard? Wasn't me, couldn't have been me; my sister was herself, the two boys were also themselves, but that extra creature wearing MY overalls (of all the nerve) was not I. I searched among photos of myself, photos that I had delighted in, photos that were just awesome, because even if I wasn't as pretty as my sister and cousin, I was still something nifty. They were all tainted, every last one of them. Instead of me, I saw a sniggering goblin. Furthermore, in many of the earlier photographs, especially the group ones, I was either frowning or looking confused.
Then the mirror began playing similar tricks. Why, I don't know because up until that time the mirror had always been my friend, but it began telling me strange, startling things about myself. I watched as the years passed, and everyone bemoaned their photographs, and close friends would shirk in embarrassment at the removal of their make up, and all of them looked just the same to me, perhaps a little spottier, but inoffensive, and I completely failed to make the connection between their plight and my own. Every time I looked at a photograph of myself and saw that goblin grinning stupidly back at me, I thought “is this what I normally look like to everyone else? Are they just TELLING me I look nice because they're supposed to?”
Somewhere during the early teenage years, the mirror and I reached an impasse. I was just spending too much time trying to find the trick to the puzzle, and I decided to give up completely. I covered the thing up, and the cover stayed right there unless I had a specific inquiry to make of the mirror, like “What the dickens is in my eye?”
The day that my brother-in-law brought his fireman stuff for us to see was a turning point. By this time, I had learned that if you can't hide from the camera, or strike a really funny pose that will justify how ridiculous you are about to look, then you need to at least pretend to enjoy the results by tittering awkwardly and saying “Hee hee, I look so terrible in these” and everyone around you will coo, “oh, you look just fine!” First, my brother-in-law showed my friend and I how to put the gear on, then we all laughed as I got into it, then my friend's mother snapped a photo. She was always doing this sort of thing. For once, I didn't try to hide because I figured “hey, I'm barely visible in all this stuff, so how bad can it be?” Then my friend got into the gear and HER photo was snapped. Apparently at the same moment, I had had some sort of tasty beverage dribbling down my mouth and felt compelled to wipe it away with my entire forearm, and for once, I wasn't insulted by how terrible I looked in the picture even if my entire jaw was askew; it made perfect sense.
Well, my friend and I were showing another friend these photos once day. I had a crush on this guy, so I was being careful not to titter so much, or point out every single fault, and only claim crippling hideousness on photos were I actually thought I looked pretty reasonable. We came upon the fireman series. If I remember correctly, I was pretending to be the boogeyman in my photo so there was nothing remarkable there, but on my friend's photo, she suddenly exclaimed “I look absolutely terrible, here!” (How was this possible? You couldn't see her except for her eyes.) and he replied calmly, “I think E— looks a little worse.”
And I laughed, and it wasn't the embarrassment titter. I was genuinely pleased. He'd seen how ridiculous I was, too, not in all the photographs, just that one and he admitted it. That meant that I wasn't constantly ugly in every photo and in every mirror; occasionally I was just normal and only thought I was ugly, and sometimes I really did look ridiculous. Just like all my friends and relatives who ever claimed hideousness of a photo when they looked just normal, I must have had some Photo Goblin (and a Mirror Goblin, to boot!) telling me lies whenever I looked at a picture of me. What if this Photo Goblin could be placated, and taught to let me see me the way other people do? That was crazy talk, the Photo Goblin was too full of itself by now, but it might be possible to placate the Mirror Goblin, with which I had once had a working relationship.
I started by taking the cover off the mirror. Then I told it what the little old ladies in the supermarket and my grandfather liked to tell me, that I'm such a pretty girl. After a while, the Mirror Goblin started to believe me even if I didn't, and I found around the same time that I discovered facial make-up that I could control my own level of prettiness. The Mirror Goblin and I got to talking. “No,” said the Goblin, “the black eyeliner is much to dark for you, and I think you smeared it funny, so you either need to go lighter with it or use the brown instead.”
“I think you're right,” I replied and made the necessary adjustments.
“There! Much better,” said the Mirror Goblin, and it was telling the truth.
By feeding it everything the little old ladies, and gradually younger people, small children, and eventually my peers said to me about how I looked I trained the Mirror Goblin into civility. Even if they told me I looked ugly, they did it well. I was also able to gauge where I was at on the pulchritude meter: pretty enough to be noticeable without a lot of effort, but not so pretty that it was an encumbrance. Also, not quite so pretty that everyone assumes that I know about it, which is why they keep telling me. Only in October or April would the Mirror Goblin tell me a lie, otherwise, it was quite blunt, but respectful: “That sweater is a disappointment, dear, find something that does you justice.” “No, no, you don't see it now, but you look quite good.” “You'll feel better about it tomorrow.” “Well, dear, it's Monday, so I'm not sure what you were expecting, but you look just fine.” I even trained it to recognise when I was tired and bleary. “Fix your bangs, sweetie. There! Pretty girl!”
I see now that what I need to do to train the fearsome Photo Goblin is not pretend not to notice it, but to gently correct it. Already I'm finding much improvement in its general behaviour.
As a testament to how effective this training is, on Mirror Goblins, anyway, I woke up this morning with pink eye. A rude little dragonfly had crept into my space and sewed my eyes shut, but was interrupted from getting to my nose, mouth and ears when I woke up. I like walking around in the dark, I like being so familiar with my surroundings that I don't need much light, but it's a different story altogether when you don't know what time it is, or whether or not there is daylight, and you just woke up, you're trying not to panic and at the same time remember what kind of state you left your floor in. I staggered to the other side of the room to grab a washcloth, then I staggered across to the other, other side of the room, tripping over the empty sewing machine case (what idiot left that there?!? Oh. Yea.) turned when I finally found something like a doorpost, staggered up the stairs (Zeus-on-a-stick, I hope I'm not late for work!) fumbled for the basement doorknob, fumbled for the bathroom doorknob (God help anyone who might be in there already) waited for the water in the tap to get hot and was finally able to soak my face. After a minute, I could open my bloodshot eyes, and I saw what had become of me as my eyelids were crusted over, as goop dripped from my lashes.
“Pretty girl!” said the Mirror Goblin, automatically.
Thank you, Mirror Goblin. Now's not really the time, but I appreciate the effort.
EDIT: At least one person read this and expressed concern that they encouraged my Photo Goblin. I would like to take this moment to point out that, at this time period, I had not yet discovered the cloak. Yes, that one fundamental garment that moved on to determine how I chose my clothes, how I assembled myself, had not yet made itself manifest in my life. Small wonder that, during that fragile time when nobody was choosing my clothes for me, when I was too big for hand-me-downs to blame my awkwardness on and had to actually buy clothes from a store, and did not have the staple cloak to guide me in my decisions, I dressed like a goober. Also, no wonder the Photo Goblins had so much material to work with!
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