I Have a Love-Hate Relationship with Pictures
This is the new picture I’ll be using online.
By Marcy Kennedy (@marcykennedy)
Turns out I have a love-hate relationship with pictures.
I love them because they grab important moments and help keep memories alive. I find great joy in looking back at pictures from times past. I hate them because, in the last couple of years, I’ve noticed I look older in them than I once did.
I know, right? That shouldn’t have come as a surprise. People grow old. But I’m a person who has always struggled to be comfortable with her appearance, and a photo shoot for my new website/online photos just over a week ago drudged up a lot of old insecurities I’d thought I’d put to rest. When I’m held still in an image, all the imperfections that I trick myself into thinking people don’t notice in real life can’t be hidden anymore.
I needed to replace my current photo because it was nearly eight years old. I didn’t want to replace that photo because the truth is the thirty-three-year-old me doesn’t look as good as the twenty-five-year-old me did. And as time goes on, that will get worse, not better. I won’t ever be able to go back to that girl’s face or her body.
I found myself wishing I could have a picture like Dorian Gray’s that would grow old for me. And as I thought that, I remembered a post I’d written a few years ago for August McLaughlin’s Beauty of a Woman blogfest. At the time, I wrote it because a lot of women around me were struggling with the turning-thirty hurdle. Now I’m dragging it back out because I need to remind myself of those lessons.
Dorian is the title character in Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. Dorian is an extremely handsome man, so handsome an artist friend has asked to paint him.
On the day the artist will finish the painting, Dorian waits with a much older gentleman named Lord Henry. Lord Henry tells Dorian he should enjoy his youth and beauty while he has them because those are the only things that matter.
“You have only a few years in which to live really, perfectly, and fully,” Lord Henry says. “When your youth goes, your beauty will go with it, and then you will suddenly discover that there are no triumphs left for you, or have to content yourself with those mean triumphs that the memory of your past will make more bitter than defeats.” (Chapter 2, page 26)
Dorian can’t shake Lord Henry’s words, and when he sees his picture, he’s filled with despair because the beauty in the picture will last, but his own won’t.
“When one loses one’s good looks,” Dorian says, “whatever they may be, one loses everything.”
He claims he would trade his soul in order to have the picture grow old in his place.
Lord Henry’s lie—and it is a lie—is the same one society feeds us.
It sells us Botox, liposuction, anti-aging creams, and Spanx. It tells us wrinkles and grey hairs are things to cover up. It glorifies youth and irresponsibility and marginalizes the elderly, with all their wisdom. It believes a woman should never admit to her age.
And if we buy into the lie, it puts us at peril of the same fate as Dorian.
Because of the trade he made, Dorian stays young and beautiful, while his picture ages and grows grotesque with every year that passes and every evil Dorian commits. His outside stays beautiful at the expense of his inner growth and beauty.
Eventually, overcome with guilt for the murders, suicides, and other sins he’s been part of, Dorian stabs his picture, thinking that will free him. Instead, the picture returns to youthful beauty and Dorian, in death, becomes a withered, disgusting corpse.
Like Dorian, when we buy into the lie, we start to focus more of our time and energy and money on trying to match the unrealistic standard of beauty our society holds up for us to worship. We focus less on trying to cultivate the beauty we have inside.
And in the end, we’ll never win the battle against age. We’ll all die, and most of us will die old and wrinkly, saggy and age-spotted.
Instead of dreading it, fearing it, we should rejoice in it. The most beautiful woman is one who’s lived a full life.
I’m going to wear each new crinkle in the corners of my eyes as a badge of honor speaking to the hours I’ve spent laughing with friends.
I’m going to remember that my no-longer-perfectly-flat belly is because I’ve chosen to enjoy pizza nights with my husband, eat birthday cake and ice cream with my each of my elderly grandparents, and bake cookies for my parents.
I’m going to treasure the dark circles under my eyes (the part of my age I hate the most) because it speaks to how deeply I love, to the nights spent lying awake trying to think of ways to help hurting friends or crying over deceased loved ones and pets. Deep love leaves deep marks.
So as much as I’d still like to have a picture like Dorian Gray’s, I’d never want to be like Dorian Gray.
Because external beauty is not the most important thing, at least not to me.
Do you struggle with growing older? Do you love having your picture taken or do you hate it?
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