The other week, in my The Times They Are a-Changin’ post, I referenced my growing interest in self-portraiture. As someone who always used to run in the opposite direction when a camera came out, my desire to take pictures of myself – often without my kit on – may, to many, seem a little odd.
I am a very average woman, unexceptional in almost every respect.
I’m not beautiful.
I’m not Frankenstein (well, maybe first thing in the morning).
I just am.
The other week, I saw a comment on fellow sex blogger’s post that literally made me do a double take.
Emma (the very same one who wrote the recent guest post on Femininity) posted a picture of herself on her site, Dirty Little Whispers, as part of Curvaceous Dee’s Scavenger Hunt meme and had her image criticised by a certain commenter. He expressed ‘concern’ over her body shape, the specifics of which I won’t go into (if you want find out more, you can click here), and basically implied that she needed to change herself to fit his idea of the perfect female.
Many of us profess to know that the bodies (and faces) we see in magazines, on television, in porn films, aren’t real. Yet we persist in using the images that bombard us on a daily basis as yardsticks to measure Janet and John on the street. Despite our awareness of the smoke and mirrors employed by commercial entities, we wilfully disconnect ourselves from reality, on the one hand saying ‘Oh, she’s definitely been airbrushed’ and on the other ‘I don’t measure up because I’m short a size zero waist and a set of double-D breasts’.
Some time back, a friend shared this image with me via social media:
