The Monster in the Camera
Photos are dangerous. Even when they don’t involve you meeting secretly with an enemy head-of -state to sell government secrets.That can be bad too, though.
I feel like I’m talking about danger a lot these days, and I promise next time it’ll be something totally different, but first I’ve got to just address this incredibly critical issue. And when I say “critical” I’m talking, like, THE END OF THE WORLD.
Tragic story about photos:
My boyfriend (who is now my fiancé) and I had just returned from a trip to visit his family in California. I’d met them for the first time. That should’ve been the stressful part. Nope. They were great.
My boyfriend was at his computer, saying, “I loaded the photos we took. Check these out.” What an innocent sounding request…
A second later he said, “Whoa…” And then, “Aww, sweetie. This isn’t the best of you.” I winced, trying to turn back. It was too late.
It was much, much worse than seemed realistic or fair. There was my boyfriend, smiling and looking mostly like himself, his arm around his adorably diminutive grandmother. And there, on his other side, was— something hideous and terrifying and possibly undead.
Its human characteristics were tragically mutilated—the features crooked and lumpy and obviously ravaged by disease or the aftereffects of nuclear contamination. Scraggles of longish hair and the lopsided bumps on its chest hinted at gender, without fully divulging the secret.
It appeared to be baring its teeth defensively in fear, but that might have been its desperate attempt to mimic a smile. It was hunched forward, its massive shoulders and arms balancing its awkward bulk so that it could remain upright. My boyfriend clicked onto the next picture.
“Ooh. Not so great either.” He glanced at me apologetically, as though it was his fault.
Now the creature had thrown its head back in what looked like a wild howl. Perhaps it had scented prey. I thought I saw some drool spilling from the corner of its twisted lips. The neck was stunted and thick. The chin receded into it. Based on these images, his grandmother, in the full bloom of her ninety-two years, would have probably attracted more suitors on a dating website than me.
This is a better picture of me than the ones I am writing about. Because those are way too embarrassing. Don't imagine that this is the worst picture of myself I could find.
I shuddered, suddenly imagining my boyfriend’s mother innocently showing the photo to a group of her friends. “Yes, that’s her, the young woman my son is so in love with!”
His mother’s friends would say, “Oh! Um…Well, she certainly looks…” They’d pause and frantically search for a word with a vaguely positive connotation, and finally conclude with, “Interesting.” They’d quickly add, “They seem so happy together! How wonderful!”
He kept going. They didn’t get any better. Not even one. Not even when I was in the background.
I should’ve just laughed it off. I wanted so much to just laugh it off. But suddenly I felt like it was the worst thing in the world. The feeling ambushed me. The thought of all of the friends and family members who would see these photos and check me off as unattractive in their minds (probably without even noticing that they’d done it) was acutely painful. My appearance was a personal failure. I had failed to be a good girlfriend.
It sounds stupid. Being a good girlfriend is NOT about being pretty. Right? Like hell. That’s totally a part of it. Not everything, of course. But a nice, big, self-satisfied chunk. If you’re pretty you get to go on and be other things that are more important. Like smart and talented and successful and witty and interesting and fun. But if you aren’t pretty…Well, I don’t even want to think about it. Because when I think about it, apparently, I just shut down.
It’s this horrifying to me because I can’t control it. I mean, I can put on makeup and dress nice. But really, all that doesn’t make a huge difference. I look the way I look. I look like me dressing up or me being shlumpy. So a few things:
1. I can’t control it
2. I thought I’d be really pretty by now, or at least feel really pretty
3. I hoped it wouldn’t matter
I started to cry. My boyfriend was completely baffled. I never cry. Nothing helped. He kept telling me, “But you’re so beautiful.” I figured he was obligated to both think and say that. I shook him off and went to the mirror with my camera. I stood in front of the mirror and took picture after picture after picture, as though somehow, if I could capture myself being pretty, everything would be ok.
Everyone: I know I’m not alone here. I may be the singularly least photogenic person in the entire world, but who else feels pressure to be cute because you’re in a relationship? I feel like we’re not supposed to talk about that for some reason. We’re supposed to always feel BETTER about ourselves when we have a partner. But even when the partner is amazing, it’s sometimes not quite that simple.
Kate on March 26th 2010 in beauty, body, relationships
Christine Barranco responded on 26 Mar 2010 at 3:50 pm #
Wow. How I wish there had been a forum like this when I was your age. Just to be able to converse about your fears and lift the veil of silence that covers our worst reality and let’s the light in! I always thought that I would be a grown up beautiful woman when I turned 24. Somehow that was the magical age. At 24 I was in a toxic relationship and very unhappy. I was not at all grown up nor did I feel beautiful. Now, at 57 I am coming to terms with my body. It is aging, not even gracefully but it is mine. I make the effort every day to be good to it. My body needs move so I walk. It feels better when I eat well so I try to feed it well. I fail at that often! And I know that my health now will be more of an issue as each year passes. And now they go so fast!
I work at loving who I really am and not what the culture preaches. I rarely wear makeup I usually end up smearing it all over. I don’t wear high heels they hurt my feet. I try to choose comfort over beauty. I don’t think I ever aspired to be a “beauty” just a good looking me.
I’ll do a video when I get home. I love this project!
Kate responded on 26 Mar 2010 at 3:56 pm #
Oh…the pictures…I have to say, although I am generally happy with my appearance (or happier than I was in my teens & twenties) I am not very photogenic. But I remember reading once (maybe Geneen Roth?) to remember that a picture is static, it is how you looked at that one moment in time – not how you appear in motion, happy, alive, laughing, moving around the people in your life. So after seeing hideous pictures – I draw up a few pictures from my mental photo album when I looked and felt gorgeous to try and cancel out the bad ones. For what it’s worth, my mother in law takes the worst pics of me hands down…
Alana Renton responded on 26 Mar 2010 at 4:08 pm #
I wanted to thank you for this excellent read!! I definitely enjoyed every little bit of it. I have you bookmarked your site to check out the new stuff you post.
Joanne responded on 26 Mar 2010 at 4:16 pm #
ohmygodYES. Even if the partner in the relationship is average looking and sees you at your most “unprimped” pretty often, I feel like if i let my flaws show my boyfriend is going to hear “…Her?” from all his friends, family members, etc etc. Not only is appearing pretty important, but sometimes I feel like I have to have this super impressive resume to go along with everything in order to gain approval from his friends, which goes back to Maggie’s post a few days ago about perfection.
Photos let us to scrutinize every inch of our appearance to a ridiculous degree.
By the way, I think you photograph quite well (at least I think the one captured above looks nice)
Richie Chhun responded on 27 Mar 2010 at 1:15 am #
Fantastic posting, I favorited your site so I can visit again in the future, All the Best
Emily responded on 27 Mar 2010 at 5:06 am #
I love your choice of photos
That is my favorite of you! But you are very hard to capture on film. You are looking really good on video though… I think it is your medium.
Also i think sometimes its just hard to like pictures of yourself. There are so many pictures of me that I hate. Pretty much all of them that are taken with flash. And you are always saying how photogenic I am. Cameras can just be so unfriendly..
Johnnie Amorim responded on 27 Mar 2010 at 5:07 am #
An excellent post with logical points, We have been a lurker right here for some time but desire to become a lot more engaged in the foreseeable future.
Anna responded on 27 Mar 2010 at 2:20 pm #
Oh Kate. This post broke my heart for you. I haven’t met my boyfriend’s parents yet, but he has a really close relationship with his mother. His parents visited him last week and took him out to dinner. Afterward, he and I went for a drive so I could hear about how it went…and apparently, he showed his mom a video and some pictures he had taken of me that I hated. Without asking me if I minded him showing them to her. I got upset, and he didn’t understand at first. I don’t like the idea that she saw those and probably thought the exact thing that you said…”Well, honey…she looks…interesting!”
Melinda responded on 29 Mar 2010 at 4:09 am #
I totally have a double-chin in photos. I swear I don’t have one when I look in the mirror!!! but somehow as soon as I’m in a picture, there it is. It’s so infuriating! Your totally hot in that pic, btw. I totally get how it is to feel unphotogenic though. Keep up the blogging – you two rock!!
Michael responded on 29 Mar 2010 at 4:28 am #
Great job with the site! It’s great to have people blogging about something this important!
Most of the time when other people take pictures of me they come out terrible, and I have to decide whether it will be more embarrasing to leave them there or to delete them from facebook right after my friends tag me in them. I can definitely relate to your boyfriend/fiancee predicament, because a past girlfriend (I think you know her well) and I had very different opinions about what photos of me were good and which ones were bad.
Liz responded on 29 Mar 2010 at 3:32 pm #
awesome entry
…very funny, too, though i’m sorry for your embarrassment 
that picture is, in its own cool way, a very beautiful one of you. i can’t imagine the ones you describe, since you always seem to be so graceful, but i’ll take your word for it.
Kate responded on 29 Mar 2010 at 3:43 pm #
@ Liz and Melinda and Joanne: One day, when I’m much braver, I’ll post a photo of what I actually look like in photos. And then you’ll all cringe and avert your eyes and feel very, very sorry for me. I promise
'Elisse' responded on 06 Apr 2010 at 2:17 am #
Kate:
-I know very well the fears, anxieties and insecurities of being in front of the camera. As captivating and intriguing as photography is, I can honestly say I rarely enjoy being the subject of this art/pastime. In those brief seconds of preparing to be frozen in time, a million and one things race through the mind: how’s my hair; am I smiling ‘right;’ is the camera going to add an extra fifteen pounds; etc etc etc???? And as trivial as these concerns may seem, the truth of the matter is that all small things in life, in some way or another, matter and hold some significance or value. If that weren’t the case, God knows we would be able to brush it off easily, painlessly and confidently. I would much rather be the presence behind the camera, the eye that looks out into the world and captures some recollection of an endearing but fleeting moment.
But in taking a few moments to reflect on these interconnected subjects of photography, image, beauty and the like, I realize a number of things that hadn’t really occurred to me before. Whether you are in front or behind the camera, one stands in a position of power. Behind the camera, one is like a creator, a deity who deems people, places and things as ‘good,’ ‘beautiful,’ ‘intriguing,’ etc etc etc. The photo, then, is your creation, a reflection of one’s projected ideals, sentiments, emotions and what not. When in front of the camera, one is the focus, the center. In that moment and in that photo, you serve as the vehicle through which the value of that moment, place or time, is conveyed and made known.
Now, in either case, we may not always feel our best or see the world as a beautiful place. Our realities can often be grim and dark and that is simply how life is. Maybe beauty is something that cannot always be captured, whether it be through the arts, photography or simply our memory. And as I always like to keep in mind, beauty defies the bounds of the physical. Time and time again, humanity strives to set the standards for beauty and define it in definitive ways; but I believe it cannot be done and in doing so, we are probably exposing more of our atrocities than anything else.
I’ll close with something I recently read in Namita Devidayal’s memoir The Music Room. If I remember correctly, she was quoting one of her musical gurus and this person had said that musical recordings, photographs and similar forms of documentation only succeed in capturing a mere glimpse of a person. In that moment of the recording or photograph, any number of things could have shaped the person you were in that moment, but that’s it. Essentially, these things can never fully capture or express what you’ve accomplished, the life you have lead and/or continue to lead and who you truly are.
Kate: The Seedy, Dangerous, Fascinating Internet « Eat the Damn Cake responded on 08 Apr 2010 at 12:40 pm #
[...] it turns out, we’re simply both really unphotogenic sometimes. He was the cutest boy I’d ever seen. I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I still [...]
Say “Cheese”! « beauty dart responded on 13 Jul 2010 at 12:38 pm #
[...] I’d love to know if other people feel this way about pictures of themselves, I think most of us do. I’m really curious if there are people who love having their picture taken! Oh, and Kate, who is over at Eat the Damn Cake, has a great post about this same issue, you should check out her take on it here. [...]
Elizabeth responded on 03 Nov 2010 at 7:43 pm #
This is odd because I just saw your photo on the August 2010 Dances with Fat post and was like, “DAMN, SHE’S HOT!” I freaking love your nose.
Eat the Damn Cake » no pictures, please. not when I feel so good. responded on 30 Mar 2012 at 1:01 pm #
[...] my very first post about being unphotogenic! How precious. It’s called “the monster in the camera.” Bear was still my [...]
edotwoods responded on 03 Apr 2012 at 10:55 pm #
Oh man, do I feel you. I have a very pretty face, when it’s on the move. Capture it in a second though, and I’m this crazy combination of drunk looking and terrified looking. And it fucking sucks! I’m supposed to be all confident and stuff, so running from cameras does not suit the rep I built. But oy, it’s PAINFUL to look at photos.
I think you’re an amazing writer, and I’m so happy you put this out there and that I found it. If I’m a weird picture taker, well at least I’m in good company.