I hate being on camera, especially film. I know a lot of you are probably thinking, "yeah right!" but it's true, I hate it because there is no escaping how I look. It’s right there in front of me compelling me to look at myself and inevitably I am horrendously disappointed with what I see.
I love the idea of it, don’t get me wrong. There is still that teenage part of me that imagines myself on Graham Norton being incredibly funny and looking effortlessly drop dead gorgeous. This small part of me still (incredulously) believes that it could indeed be a real possibility.
In my mind I am a super model with tight, chiselled features and luscious locks and I can’t seem to reconcile the image I have in my mind with the middle aged, loose jowled creature I see before me. Surely it’s a mistake, I think, some trick of the camera or lighting? It must be something for Christ’s sake because that thing whose skin is remarkably saggy, especially under the chin (and please, don’t get me started on the hair), simply can’t be me.
Despite this abhorrence for film and photography I have found myself willingly filming my home-schooling sessions with Eli, not just once but every.single.fricking.day. How did this happen? It’s a repeat of me hating looking at my reflection and so I put a million mirrors in my house just to torture myself. Except this is worse, I can’t look away, I am forced to have to watch myself live on camera wondering (in real time) whether I even have a good side at all. Perhaps the universe realised I was cheating with the mirrors and so conned me into thinking making these Live videos was a great idea. Clever, very clever.
To be completely honest I am not finding it as hard as I perhaps would have done a year ago. Something has changed within me these last few months, an acceptance, a release of whatever was weighing me down before. I can definitely trace this change back to my trip to Brazil in October 2020 and all the letting go that came from that (insert images of me howling like a dishevelled banshee at the drop of a hat).
Even if I don’t understand it fully, that was some deep healing work that happened there and I do feel different. Very different in fact. I haven’t gone so far as to like what I see but at least what I see doesn’t make me sink to the point of actually disliking myself. That is most definitely progress. I have become indifferent to the shell (sort of) and instead relish the inside, that which gives substance to the whole.
Saying that, one thing about my shell that I have noticed through this daily expose is that there is a rigidity to my face, as if I have forgotten how to smile. Now this is something I can remedy and is perhaps worth remedying.
In watching myself it strikes me that I am not good at smiling and talking at the same time. Compare my stiff efforts to Americans, who seem to be all teeth as they talk, and I most definitely look like a sour old puss. People look better when they smile as they talk, they seem to exude an excitement for life that makes them look far more appealing than perhaps they really are. Most definitely far more interesting than they really are.
Smiling also works the muscles in your face and I therefore theorise that if you smile a lot and talk while you are smiling your face becomes firmer. As I am approaching the grand age of 40 with alarming alacrity, anything that could help towards firming up the old visage is very much welcomed.
In fact, I am practising it right now, mouthing the words I am writing while smiling as broadly as I can. If anyone happened to look into my study and see me they might think I am finding my work extremely amusing (naturally I do) and that I am taking great pleasure in the process. Of course, the latter is true (not so much the former) I am just unused to demonstrating it in such an obvious manner. I have a tendency towards being more neutral, my state of being part of my complex inner world not to be drawn attention to. Again, I hear some of you going "yeah right!"
I know where this came from, well part of it at least. For as far back as I can remember my older brother used to tease me, telling me I had massive front teeth and that I looked like a hippo. I, of course, was horrified by this revelation thinking that as well as horribly over-sized front teeth, hippos were large and cumbersome occupying far too much space. They also like to wallow around in mud which doesn’t say much for their intelligence. No, this was definitely not a compliment and as my brother was the wisest person I knew, the most brilliant, fun and inspired, I had to believe him.
When I was 12 years old I embarked on a campaign to stop smiling widely. It was the only way I could safeguard the unsuspecting people around me from the shock of my monstrous teeth. I could smile but I couldn’t part my lips and I decided that it was better to avoid any form of it at all, if I could manage it.
Surely the whole brooding thing was more glamourous anyway. Don’t models always utilise "the pout" that simultaneously sucks in their cheeks in a pleasing manner? This is quite a skill, one I haven’t mastered, despite trying for many years. I know this because I went to have some head shots made years ago I tried the lips shut, half smile, cheeks sucked in thing and the photographer was most displeased. He kept saying he couldn’t get the picture right because there was something strange about my lips. Sigh. I can never win.
Cheeks are another problem with smiling. I have big ones, you see, and smiling makes them worse. Even after years of trying not to smile some of the boys at school started to call me chipmunk because of my prominent cheeks.
“Do you store your food in your cheeks for a snack later?” they would taunt. I laughed this off but unconsciously it compounded the belief that there must be something deeply wrong with my face, not only my teeth but also my cheeks. I decided that clearly smiling had to be controlled as much as possible and endeavoured to do so with a focused determination.
That’s all very well when you are young and smooth skinned but as you get older and you don’t exercise your muscles they lose tone and begin to sag in unfathomable ways (take heed children, don’t become miserable teens, you’ll regret it later). You also start to get frown lines around your mouth, have you noticed that? I certainly did, when I realised I was looking more and more like my grandmother. That’s an incentive to do something about it if ever there was one.
A quick google search tells me that there are actually 42 muscles in the face, 42! I am blown away by this number. Who would have thought our face could be so complicated or that there are so many muscles to have to work with in such a relatively small area. No wonder face yoga has become such a thing recently. I am now making strange faces at the computer as I write this in the hope that it is never too late to turn this picture around.
Perhaps the lack of face yoga has contributed to my very stiff and creaky right jaw. When I open my mouth, you can hear my jaw creak from quite far away. It could be something of a party trick if one was so inclined, I am not.
My mum always sits across the table and grimaces at me when I do it (not as a party trick but just from yawning or taking a large bite from a piece of cake). She does it out of sympathy not complaint and it is rather disconcerting to know that she can hear it from there. I always thought that seeing as it was happening inside me that only I could hear it. Unfortunately, apparently not.
Just so we are clear, I no longer think I look like a hippo, have oversized teeth and food storing cheeks. I have spent years unpicking those unconscious beliefs and am thankfully free from them. The fallout from all that though is a certain stiffness in the face and this is what I have noticed through our foray into online over-sharing and have decided that it is never too late to do something about. Embracing the smile, after all, is hardly harmful and one that perhaps can have long-reaching effects.
The interesting thing about practising smiling is that it reminds me that there are things in life worth smiling for and this has been a pleasing added bonus to the whole process. Generally speaking, most people on this planet have experienced things that are relatively challenging giving us good reason to look pretty miserable most of the time. But today, as I was practising smiling (as you do) I reflected how even though we have difficult times in our lives we also have many joyful moments too, things that are worth smiling for.
Our lives are made up of multiple moments of both misery and joy and our facial expressions don’t necessarily have to reflect whichever state we are in. Why should it? The two are separate after all, the situation from the facial reaction. It can be a choice, our choice, to face the day with a smile or a frown. To look adversary in the face and know you will live through it, quite possibly with a smile (or not, doesn’t matter) and come out the other side. That to smile doesn’t diminish the anguish or challenge you face but it can sure as hell make it easier to deal with and in the long run it gives you the added benefit of a natural facelift. Bonus all round, methinks.
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