I got asked this question the other day, and it made me think…

In the age of the insane amount of selfies, I admit I am not a frequent participant. My instagram consists of a lot of moody shots (and I am in some of them!) but overall, no, I don’t post a lot of photos of myself.

Why?

I think a lot of it has to do with my self-consciousness — inside I will always be an awkward-looking teenager — but also, of all the things I can do and contribute to the internets, I think my face is among the least interesting.

I interviewed this artist not too long ago named Felipe Pantone. In writing up the profile of him, I asked him for a picture of himself — and he declined. He told me he was very careful to keep images of his face off the internet, because:

I produce, like, ten visual things per week. My face is the least interesting thing of them all. I didn’t pick my face. I wish I could have picked it, but it is what it is. The work I make, I pick every single thing. I’m way more what I paint than what I look like.

(Full article on that super cool artist here.)

What he said just makes so much sense to me. We are a society obsessed with looks, and I’m not judging here — I’ve always been the first to swoon at the face of a particularly handsome boy, after all. But I think in the grand scheme of things, appearances are incredibly over-emphasized.

Like Pantone, I didn’t pick my face. I spent a long time wishing that I had been able to, even going so far as to save up for a nose job I thought I desperately needed when I was fifteen. Ultimately I grew more comfortable with my appearance, but it’s still not my favorite thing about myself — and I think that’s a good thing.

Looks don’t last. The things I value most about myself — my character, my words — do.

Photo of not me found here