If You’ve Ever Cringed at a Pic of Yourself on Social Media, Read This

/ Viv@Grief Happens

Here’s the awesome post over at Caramel Lattes and Stilettos.

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For those of you who read regularly here at Grief Happens, you know I’m a big believer in real, and today I got a good dose of it.

Although I don’t discuss it all that much on this site, I also love fashion and pretty things. I’d also be a straight-up liar if I ever denied that I can be vain. Can’t we all?

Even though at this stage of my life I select my wardrobe based on comfort level and whether I think it’s adequate for chasing active children, I still like to look nice.

I’ve also been known to call out my people when they post pictures of me looking ragamuffin all over social media. I mean, I don’t think I have to look perfect, but can we try to get my eyes pointing in the same direction at least? Thanks.

So today I was thrilled to read a perfect post over at Caramel Lattes & Stilettos by Dawn. I’m a newbie to their site, but I’ve loved everything I’ve read thus far.

Social Media Authenticity: The reason I didn’t have my husband remove the unflattering pic of me on his FB page, struck a chord. I needed to read this and loved everything the author had to say.

I’m not going to break it down further here because I encourage you to head over there to check it out, but I’ll leave you with this quote from the piece:

“Consistently rejecting who I am in exchange for some filtered version of myself doesn’t make me happy. I want people to see my real life, the good, bad, and ugly of it all because human perfection is not beautiful, it’s a lie.”

Check out Dawn’s piece and I’d love to hear your thoughts on how you handle bad pics of yourself on social media.

8 thoughts on “If You’ve Ever Cringed at a Pic of Yourself on Social Media, Read This”

  1. Long story, but I ended up in a beach house this spring with my Dad and some of his brothers and their wives. Several funny things came out of it. Walking in the door and seeing every single person in the house on their iPhones and iPads instead of talking to one another (it’s NOT just the younger generation, everyone of the was 60+ years old) for one. Anyways, I took a lot of photos of them at the event we were all there for and after I edited them, I shared them all on dropbox. Within minutes I started getting messages that photos were being deleted. WTF? I assumed that it was a generational thing, the old folks weren’t used to dropbox, and instead of copying the files, where somehow or another moving them by accident. Oh no. They were all deleting the photos of themselves that they hated. I was kind of hoping that by the time they got that age they’d have outgrown vanity and would love the photos of the group all together. Nuh-uh.

    Liked by 1 person

    • Wow. Sorry I’m just now replying — been that kind of a month. Thank you for sharing this story. That is pretty unbelievable that the older people were the ones freaking out about their pictures AND that they were actually deleting them!! I have to actively find something I like about my image when I’m struck with initial disgust brought on by an unflattering candid photo. I read another piece on this topic recently where the author wrote something like —

      ‘This is what I currently look like. Has it been better? Yes. Has it been worse? Probably. But I don’t want to hide in the house because my current look is reflective of living life. Life is full of good and bad times and if authentic, photographs will reflect that…unless we delete all the ones we deem horrid.’

      Obviously I’m paraphrasing since I can’t remember the actual article or the author, but what I wrote was my take-away and made an impression on me.

      So much to ponder on this subject in today’s world of social media.

      Like

  2. I know this isn’t addressing the issue, but please forgive me!!!!! I’ve been off Facebook for over 4 months and I don’t miss it at all! That’s strange because when I’m on it, I love it for the most part. I deactivated my account cold-turkey because I wanted to buckle down and focus on completing my MS. I had become too distracted by social media. I thought it would be hard to detach, but it wasn’t – that was a minor miracle. šŸ˜‰

    The only reason I need to consider returning to FB is because I have a page for my book. I guess I’ll want to reactivate it when the time comes, otherwise I’d stay away for good….. :000 Xo

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Thanks for sharing this and the link. Funny that you should mention this — I HATE my photos in general, so when people tag me, it’s not just about how I look in the moment, to me, it’s also an invasion of my privacy and my wishes to be left alone. While I think that even good photos or posts are authentically representative, you’re right in that it’s still an incomplete picture. We aren’t always this happy or good-looking, and that’s A-Okay.

    Liked by 1 person

    • I’m rushing out the door & of course I have WAY more to say — SO MANY FREAKING WORDS IN MY BRAIN, ALWAYS — but I’m the same way. I hate pics of myself AND can we all just take it down a notch. It is an invasion of privacy. I’m also struggling with the reality that almost nothing is actually private anymore. šŸ˜«

      Liked by 1 person

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