The sad girl
About two years ago, Kean and I and a photographer friend ventured out to Black Sand Beach in Marin County to take a sexy photoshoot with me as the subject. The theme was playful and animalistic – I wanted to feel like a sexy dark creature who lives in a cave and needs to be tamed before you can touch her.
The thing is that I often have a hard time feeling sexy and playful on camera. I am not a natural at modeling, but I do like to try. Sometimes the results are pleasing. That day they were not, even if I had felt excited about the shoot all day and was happy to have Kean with me as my “fluffer”. I felt bad for my photographer friend because she had been excited about the shoot too and had made a lot of effort to make me feel sexy and playful. But I don’t think I look sexy or playful in the photos. There are a handful that I think are okay, and there are many in which I really don’t like my face.
Here is one photo that is one of the better ones, one that I can actually stand. The lighting is good and flatters my face. In a lot of the other ones, I look more like a middle-aged lady trying a little too hard to be sexy.
I learned from my mother to call people “ugly” because she called people that sometimes, people on TV or people we knew. I haven’t called anybody besides myself ugly in a long time because it doesn’t feel good. Kean has helped me with that because I have never heard him refer to anybody as ugly. But that’s what I think when I look at some of these photos.
This is one of the photos that make me cringe. It probably didn’t help that I had just shaved off most of my hair. Part of my head was covered in “hedgehog hair”, which I had never thought particularly attractive. I have been known to call myself “ugly” in some of these photos, though I am reconsidering that now. I have also called past versions of myself “ugly.” When I was camping with Kean and Jeremy recently, I told an anecdote from when I was 13 and hanging out with my beautiful friend that all the boys liked. I explained “I was kind of ugly back then.” That’s when Jeremy said “When were you ever ugly?” The truth contained in that question really hit me, and I started crying for having been so mean to myself for so long.
This week I started participating in the Inner Mean Girl cleanse to help me not be so hard on myself. I have been working on this for years now but I could still use more help.
It took a lot of courage for me the other day to show Jeremy all the photos that were taken that day on Black Sand Beach. I told him that I don’t like them and asked him to please be kind. He said “Why are not smiling in them? You don’t look like you’re having fun.” That stung but I can accept it. A photo came up that I find particularly cringe-worthy, and I said “That’s just ugly!” And Jeremy said “I think you just look sad.”
I have considered deleting most or all of the photos from the set so that I won’t ever have to be embarrassed again by my failed effort to appear sexy and playful. But I think it’s healthy for me to keep them and even share them. So, to paraphrase this post: Here are two photos of me from two years ago in which I am feeling insecure and looking sad.
