Linkable content

[liv]

Seeing stuff on Dreamwidth that I actually want to propagate makes me feel the site has arrived, there are people here creating and not just parking their name.

So, you should read forthwritten's really thoughtful piece on Steampunk, with some great discussion.

Secondly, phoenix spread a meme from zarhooie, where instead of posting a picture of yourself, you post a physical description in words. There's been quite a bit of discussion about how people feel safer at DW talking about themselves as embodied people, whether that's because they're trans, or POC, or fat, or women who are not conventionally beautiful. It's easy to hide these things on the internet, but it's also much nicer when you don't feel you have to.

The other aspect of phoenix's comment was that it's very hard not to be self-deprecating when writing about your appearance. I think a lot of people end up with a degree of fear of being mocked for their appearance, so you sort of want to get in first and say you're ugly. And plenty of people really do believe they're a lot uglier than how they appear to others. I think this is particularly acute for girls / women between the ages of about 12 and mid-20s, but it's pretty pervasive.

I look a bit younger than my actual age, which is 30. I'm a little shorter and a little plumper than average, with a curvy figure and short legs in proportion to my body. I have hip-length, light-brown hair, which is a bit too heavy to curl but its curly inclinations are visible as escaping all over the place. I usually wear it in a single plait.

My face is oval-shaped, with clear, light pink skin. I have hazel eyes, or more specifically, my irises are green towards the rim shading to brown towards the centre. I wear glasses, which are round with scuffed gold frames and missing one of the nose-pads, so they're a bit wonky. I get compliments on my nose, but generally noses get praised for being unremarkable rather than prominent. My ears stick out a bit but not hugely. I'm very smiley, so in photos I often have a lot of teeth and nearly closed eyes. I have fairly thin lips and my teeth are just slightly off from being straight, not enough to have been corrected.

I usually dress fairly conservatively, but when I do uncover flesh it's much more likely to be my shoulders and cleavage than my legs. I suppose I'm quite pleased with my neck and shoulders, but I can't think of how to describe them to distinguish them from anyone else's! I have both a waist and a tummy, in that I carry weight in front. My bottom is large and protruding and my thighs are fat even in proportion to my general heaviness. I dress in bright colours, especially purples, with some blues and dark reds, and usually combine a lot of fairly floaty layers, sometimes looking scruffy and not matching, but at least reasonably smart when I need to be.

I'd be very interested to see other people's takes on this meme, especially as my reading list here contains a bunch of people I've met through the DW project and I often don't know what you look like if you don't have a personal portrait for an icon. Go on, describe yourself in words without saying a word about how ugly you are!

Comments

[shreena]

It is interesting how self-conscious I feel at the idea of writing something like this out. It would probably be good for me to try, though.

[liv]

That's interesting, I think of you as somebody who's more than usually confident in your body, or at least oblivious about social pressure and beauty standards. Admittedly talking about yourself is weird in general, but it's really excruciating when it's physical appearance.

[shreena]

I don't think I am particularly confident in my body, I think it's more that I don't really associate my body with me so I don't have very strong feelings about it. Which I think comes across as confidence.

[liv]

I see the distinction, yeah. I think I'm about the same; I don't care about my body very much and therefore insults to my appearance don't really seem to be targeted at me. It's not that I think I'm stunningly beautiful or anything, but my body is functional and not so ugly that it makes random strangers hostile to me, and that's all I can ask from it.

*trying to kick my lurking habit*

[falena]

This is such an original meme! I'm especially interested in seeing how the self-portraits compare to the mental image I have created of my internet 'acquaintances'...FYI, I've always pictured you a bit like Virginia Woolf, I don't know why.

I'll try and do it myself, even though I'm sure it'll be quite challenging, for all the reasons you listed.

[liv]

It is surprisingly hard, isn't it? I'm totally flattered at looking like Virginia Woolf in your imagination. I mean, as random historical women go, she looks more like me than some. But I quite like being associated with her anyway.

[khalinche]

Interesting meme, especially considering that one of the things people seem to value about online interaction is the decreased importance of their physical presence/appearance. What might make it even more interesting would be to solicit the descriptions of people who know you and people who've never met you, to see how they chime with your own self-description. If you put your own description behind a cut and made anonymous comments possible, and then asked people to post a description of you without reading yours first, you could harvest a fairly truthful range of opinions about how you look. But in order to do that you would have to really trust people to be kind as well as honest, and that's very brave indeed.

[liv]

I did think about asking other people for descriptions but decided against it because I thought I'd be putting my friends and acquaintances in an awkward position. I mean, people who know me well know that my self-esteem isn't really based on what people think of my appearance. I've even dated people who liked me for my personality but didn't think highly of my physical beauty. But for someone who knows me slightly, it could really make them uncomfortable for me to effectively say, so, do you think I'm good-looking, then?

Of course, I'd be upset if someone I considered a friend actually insulted me, but it would be the insult that would hurt, not what it referred to. So if they said, I think you're overweight and poorly dressed and not at all my type, I wouldn't be bothered, but if they said you're such an ugly cow, you look like the back of a bus, I would be hurt. I don't think anyone would actually do that (except maybe a passing troll whose opinions I wouldn't care about), so the level of trust and bravery isn't all that high. Just, massive social awkwardness; it's bad enough talking about your own appearance without asking other people to comment on it.

[blue-mai.livejournal.com]

oddly, there's a post i've been thinking about making since the weekend that isn't entirely about physical self-description but would include it... maybe i'll write it soon.
i don't think of you as dressing floaty, although layers yes. i find it interesting but also a bit wrong somehow that you describe yourself in reference to 'average'. maybe it's just a practical way of being understood, i wonder if it's possible to not do this and still get the meaning across? wrong - because to read it, i'm automatically lead to ponder what average is, what you might think of as average, and then to compare that to your description to work out what you look like. obviously, i know what you look like anyway, but y'know...
steampunk - interesting essay, but i find it hard to get worked up about. i suppose my exposure to it is very much as an aesthetic, a Going Out thing, and not as a 'movement', and frankly there are so many worse things (most things) about Going Out. i think a lot of people get into it because it expresses positive geeky interest in engineering/mechanics/making things, and is glamorous. sometimes it bothers me, but mainly through specific slippery people who exist in all spheres.
i've found it hard to get worked up about a lot of resonant discussions, and one day i might be able to put my finger on firstly, what i mean by 'resonant discussions', and secondly, why i'm so ambivalent. i doubt it'll ever happen. perhaps it has something to do with the level of exclusion operating even when the problems are being discussed, i'm not sure whether it's that or just that i give humans a lot of give.

[liv]

I always love your comments, you're so interesting. You could well be right that I shouldn't compare myself to average. But saying I'm short and plump doesn't mean much on its own either.

I know what you mean about getting worked up about stuff. I don't think forthwritten is saying that racism in the Steampunk movement is the worst thing in the world ever, I think she's mainly just pointing out that it exists, and that people like her feel excluded from all of the fun geeky glamourous dressing up stuff.

A lot of geek culture is like that, they have this self-image of being really inclusive and welcoming to freaks, but in fact it's a really, really white middle-class subculture. This doesn't mean that people are racist, it's just that it's a lot easier to be a freak than to be someone that society despises just for existing. Also, especially with the online elements of geek culture, there's this attitude that you can't tell what race or gender or anything else anyone is, so you just treat everybody like a youngish, white, middle-class male. Which is fine as far as it goes, but it leads to clashes when people either don't want to pretend, or get into a situation where they can't pretend, because their experiences are different from those of the typical geek. (I mostly identify as a geek myself, so I'm talking about my people here.)

[blue-mai.livejournal.com]

i've been feeling particularly dullish lately so thanks :)
i suppose the online thing is that i have such a limited view of it, the bit i interact with is much more aware and feels less like everyone is white and male (the other two i'll give you) than my experience of real life. i can't really comment on 'online' in general. of course one should always try and improve things...