Unnattractive Photos of Myself

Last night, I watched the Oscars pre-show for about ten minutes, before I had to turn it off in disgust. All of that preening and posing and self-congratulatory waste of everyone's time was just too much for me. The scene from Annie Hall comes to mind where Alvy Singer makes himself sick before he has to present an award. "They love to give out awards...Greatest Fascist Dictator, Adolf Hitler."

Last week I was feeling somewhat under appreciated at work. Yes, even in the law librarian world there is office politics and a social hierarchy in the affiliated professional organizations. But after being bitter about it for an afternoon, I realized that I stopped needing to feel validation from others to feel like an intelligent and worthwhile person. If I was looking for external validation, then I certainly would have never become a law librarian.

This led to a larger realization, that sometime in the past five years I have almost entirely stopped caring about how others view me. That doesn't mean that I go around being rude to people for no reason, because that isn't the kind of person that I want to be. Rather, it means I don't care if I speak my mind and someone dislikes me as the result of that. I don't care if one day I am galloping down the sidewalk with Knightley because he wants to run (and I still am wearing the dress that I wore to work that day) and people stare at me like I am crazy. I just don't care.

Case in point, I used to refuse to have pictures taken of me. Or if they were taken of me, I refused for them to be seen because in 9 out of 10 of them, I would look fat or I would be blinking, or my hair would be askew, etc. etc. etc. So only the pristine, Leslie approved ones could be viewed in public. But those pictures only reflect 1/10 of reality. Most days, life isn't perfect. Something is askew. Heck, I am chubby and I like food too much to say no when I sometimes should. That is reality.

So here to reflect that realization, are the other 9 out of 10 shots that wouldn't before have seen the light of day. In each of these pictures, I do not look good. Something is wrong. But I believe that a blog should reflect actual reality, and not just those too cute, too posed, too perfect days.

Here's to the rest of reality.

Hair blown in imperfect ways:

Awkward dancing moves causing my stomach to look like it goes on and on and on (not to mention the painful look on my face; If I knew that I looked this bad every time doing the "Pencil Sharpener", then I might not do it so much. Wait, that's not true; Now, I know I look like this, but at every dance party, I still break it out.).

Waiting for a Hillary Clinton rally, I look not all there:

It probably isn't possible for one to stand more awkwardly on top of a haystack in Mississippi than this:

They aren't pretty, but in every single one of them, I was having a good time. So why forsake memories for the sake of beauty?