Like most disabled women, probably? I have a complicated relationship to my appearance. I now understand that the impossible beauty idols of my youth wore a lot of makeup, and it wasn’t fair to compare my bare face to their immaculately done visions-of-loveliness at any age. I’ve long lamented, quite angrily, that filters are now accessible to everyone, famous or not, applying renewed pressure for glamorous perfection that would have thrown the teenage girl I was into more I’LL NEVER BE PRETTY ENOUGH breakdowns than she was already having.
From 2012-January 2023, I built a fraction of my identity around the fact that I Don’t Take Selfies. I even wrote a whole post about it. Gym selfies had, by then, become something of an exception, but not easily. Before the first one I ever shared, I took a poll on Twitter asking if I should post one. My therapist asked why I needed others’ approval on this score and I told her it was because I’m not some superficial dumb jock. I really said that. (For the curious, yes, my head operates circa 1999 at the latest.)
Then I was drinking martinis at a bar in New Orleans and the light in the bathroom shifted my whole mind. I couldn’t help it, I took this:
Part of that compulsion was my new cut and my first (of many! starting when I have more hair) experiments with hair dye. But I also felt something new vis-a-vis my reflection. I still can’t quite describe what that something is, but I became more comfortable with the dubious practice of selfie-taking after that. If you follow me on Twitter you’re aware of this. But I still abhor the normalization of devoting tons and tons of time on one’s selfies because we’re all going to die someday. Don’t risk spending your last moments on our burning planet wondering how many Likes means you’re beautiful. But.
Last night, I got caught up in the AI filters. I didn’t think I was like that, that I could do that, but in true sci-fi dystopia fashion, I was lured in by the promise of dreams come true. Like my being a mermaid:
Or a Fire Dominatrix:
Or your hero come to save you when the world ends:
Or just crazy fucking cool like this:
But this one’s my favorite:
In some ways, I feel good about myself knowing that I’m the source material for incarnations I would’ve previously guessed were much further away. But I can also sense some addictive properties that, thankfully, I haven’t succumbed to. By definition, something you want to be is something you, well, want to be.
It’s a little hard to look away from a machine that can make you that.
My dad absolutely LOVED tech, the more sci-fi the better, and snow. So here he is with 14-year-old me, in the days before he grew his trademark Folksinger Beard, welcoming you into some sort of Winter Realm:
Where are we going from here? We’ll see. and if you’ve got experience with weird alternate universe visions of yourself staring back at you, I would love to know about them.