Miss Ashley Pants

Oh, good.

I’d been looking for an excuse to write on this “how we judge our own appearances” study.

I saw something about it a while ago and was just kind of lukewarm about my feelings on transforming it to a written piece. But (along with the truckstop hooker documentaries and letting James Franco write for them), I now have yet another thing to thank VICE for – spotlighting internet idiots looking for external validation.

Apparently there’s this subreddit thing (I still really don’t get how the regular Reddit works, but that’s irrelevant) called “AmIugly?”. It’s exactly what it sounds like. Threads of people posting pictures and asking the collective unconscious to vote with qualifying reasons, yay or nay. Like Top Model. Except probably with more suicides once votes are cast. And while there was a tl;dr article attached to the facebook post, VICE pretty much nailed the gist with its elegantly crafted description:

“Sounds like a fucking nightmare.”

I’d have to agree. Let’s step away from the actual subreddit content for a moment and revisit that study I was talking about a second ago: people who can’t decide shit about themselves for themselves. The study took pictures of people, and then gave a spectrum of their faces – modified to be more and less “aesthetically pleasing”. When asked which was the real Slim Shady, the people would often choose the prettiest looking one and say, “that’s me!”. Delusions of grandeur? Or a symptom of our best-face-forward culture – uploading our best angled image to social media in the hopes that someone might compliment the lie that tells us “you’re this pretty from all angles – including underchin!“…? There’s more to be said about this (another day, another article), but for now we’ll get back to subreddit.

As I nervously ventured onto the site, I was quite aware already that I could easily waste an entire workday reading the cruel comments I knew I’d soon see. However, I was fully surprised to see from the few posts through which I meandered, that there seemed to be a lot of people asking for honesty, offering honesty nicely, and receiving advice gracefully. Not the fishing for compliments and reeling in trolls display I’d genuinely anticipated.

Even so – I tend to feel like this focus is kind of ridiculous.

It’s like an inception version of a wrong-way life sign. First kids are judging their worth on outward appearance. Then they’re asking someone else to judge it too. Furthermore, they’re using a still life picture to determine worth. That’s like… three filters of facepalm sautéed in a glaze of “Nah, baby. You’re doing it wrong.”

But I can relate to this awkward outlook made more awkward by trying to match up to what everyone else is doing. I’ve long felt like my face changes every day – like that suit they wear in A Scanner Darkly that constantly shifts images

And while I might be mildly insane – I’m learning this perception is not necessarily a symptom of that.

As a human woman, my body does indeed shift hither and thither every day. There’s addition and subtraction of fat tissue. There’s my roots which grow out. My posture. My expression when we’re talking over coffee and fresh fruit. My expression when you’re asking me how I get my protein as a vegan. The dermal terrain which falls into a lunar-like entropy once a month. There’s the retention of water I can reduce within a day of guzzling Fiji and drinking Yogi’s detox tea.

So… me not being able to define that as categorically hot or not? Yeah. That’s not so crazy.

What is is taking something as 3-dimensional as a whole human being – the way their words make you ponder what you think you know. The music they introduce you to which forever reminds you of them. The jokes they tell. The perfume or natural scent emanating from their hair. How their face changes and body moves when they play the guitar. The glisten that happens spontaneously in their eyes. The subtle platonic love you feel watching them get immersed in art or reading a good book. The microexpressions they unwittingly make when speaking with you. How freely and uninhibited they move through life.

Yes, what IS crazy it taking all of that and dumbing it down to be defined by a 2-dimensional image from the past.

Because in this context, a picture’s not even worth a thousand turds.

See?

Wouldn’t that be better in real life?