Beautiful (vanity)?

beau·ti·ful

adjective

1. having beauty; possessing qualities that give great pleasure or satisfaction to see, hear, think about,etc.; delighting the senses or mind: a beautiful dress; a beautiful speech.

2. excellent of its kind: a beautiful putt on the seventh hole; The chef served us a beautiful roast of beef.

3. wonderful; very pleasing or satisfying.

noun

4. the concept of beauty (usually preceded by the  ).

5.( used with a plural verb ) beautiful things or people collectively (usually preceded by the  ): the good andthe beautiful.

6. the ideal of beauty (usually preceded by the  ): to strive to attain the beautiful.

van·i·ty

 

noun

1. excessive pride in one's appearance, qualities, abilities, achievements, etc.; character or quality of being vain; conceit: Failure to be elected was a great blow to his vanity.

2. an instance or display of this quality or feeling.

3. something about which one is vain.

4. lack of real value; hollowness; worthlessness: the vanity of a selfish life.

5. something worthless, trivial, or pointless.

(dictionary.com)

I recall the first time I ever saw a very strategically angled photo of someone on their Myspace page, and I didn't realize at the time that I was looking at one of earlier forms of a selfie. You know what I'm talking about. Stand in front of the bathroom mirror, turn flash on, place camera as high in the air as you can, point down in the most flattering angle, be stoic or pouty, or somehow make eyes look 10x larger than they ever are in real life, snap photo. Bam! New Myspace profile picture created. Girls were proudly making duck lips with their mouths and pointing the camera down their shirts. (Still do, actually.)

Now I've started noticing that girls are all smiling in this one particular way where every girls' smile looks like the next. Has anyone else noticed this?? There is a certain way they curve their lips and use their chin, and then they incorporate their eyebrows and nose in making this face, and it kind of resembles a smile but a very universal one that other people are capable of doing as well. Or, maybe I'm the only person to notice it. I don't know because I've never talked to anyone about this. Maybe this is some kind of thing that the mind does after you've viewed a few too many consecutive pictures of smiles. Anyway, once, for fun, I tried to even make that face in the mirror and I couldn't do it. Then it dawned on me, these girls are PRACTICING this fake smile! If I'm being honest, for a second I was disappointed that I couldn't do it. Not that I needed to take a picture of myself doing it and make an Insta out of it, but I guess I wanted to see if I would look like all of the rest of them when I made the face. For a second.

Then I realized that I would prefer it if I never did. I don't want to blend in, I don't want to look everyone else…at least not right now. I have before though. Psh. I'm not here attempting to take some high road and claim to never have participated in taking a selfie or trying to find a flattering angle for a picture of myself, or even making duck lips. (Less complicated than this practiced smile trend going on, so I can.) I have done so, and will continue for as long as I'm human, to attempt to present the best version of myself most of the time, or at least wanting to. I'm not exempt from wanting to do that.

With all of our various social media outlets for revealing our vanity, it does happen frequently. And most of the time our vanity is disguised as something else, and widely accepted. (Hint: #ss, #tbt, #wcw, #mcm, #wbw -- which, translated mean: selfie Sunday, throwback Thursday, woman crush Wednesday, man crush Monday, and way back Wednesday. These are a few examples of hashtags I'm familiar with, which ultimately help promote our vanity in various forms, even sometimes being used by one individual to promote the vanity of another. i.e., #wcw/#mcm.) I know that it's not always the intent, and I'm not accusing anyone specifically of this. I'm just saying these are just a few of the ways that vanity is being concealed and snuck into our lives. Again, I'm not exempt of being a part of this.

…But something happened this past week that changed my perspective on flattering angles and special faces.

About a week ago, a new Facebook trend was brought to my attention. Usually when that happens I roll my eyes and ignore it, but this time I was intrigued. I wondered who started it, how long it had been "trending," and what the purpose for it was. The trend was a challenge by friends/to friends, to find and post five photos on their own Facebook timeline in which they feel beautiful.

If you haven't seen it, most of them read something like, "I was challenged by ______ to post 5 pictures I feel beautiful in, and I challenge ________ ." (With photos posted directly underneath.)

What caught my attention was that there was no apparent vanity going on in the photos I was seeing being posted by others. The difference with this new Facebook trend was that women all over the place were being challenged to choose just five photos to present themselves to the [Facebook] world, and they weren't choosing the expected, typical types of photos. It wasn't women only finding the pictures with the best angles, or the most edits and filters used--it was women choosing events/experiences/people/moments/memories, and then sharing photos that represent and encompass something they experienced that made them feel beautiful.

A couple examples of some of my friends' responses to this challenge:

 "Funny how when looking over the pictures I feel like the beauty came from the moment in and of itself and the people that it is shared with."  -Jenny Blake

"Mostly I just love the people I'm with."   -Amanda McCambridge

I was truly fascinated about this aspect of it. I felt it too when I was picking my own photos. (Yes, I accepted and shared the challenge.) It wasn't about what I looked like in the photos as much as the memories, and how I felt when the pictures were taken. And in the past several days I have been enjoying seeing the chosen pictures on my newsfeed. But not just pictures; they are snapshots of what reminds us that we are beautiful. And for a week, the women on Facebook, in some small way, have been ignoring the part of posting photos that allows vanity to sneak up on them. We are appreciating life by appreciating those moments with the people we love. 

Or, maybe this is just my perspective.

But if so, I'll just keep it that way.

Here's a new challenge: Go back and re-read the definitions I shared above, choose for yourself what you want to present, on Facebook and in life, and then work at doing that.