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I think the main reason a lot of child stars don't make it is that it's hard to see someone as cute and then all of a sudden see them as having more depth. I guess I was just lucky that, when I was little, nobody thought I was that cute. --Christina Ricci |
Saturday, June 26, 1999 Skin Deep I hate the way I look. I'm given to understand that this is par for the course, especially here in the glorious, glamorous U.S. of A. Which doesn't in the least alter the fact that when I look in the mirror, I see a pirate with bad posture looking back at me. All I need is an eyepatch, a peg leg, and a parrot sitting on my shoulder to complete the effect. I already have the scraggly beard. Bad as I look in person, I'm even worse on celluloid. Some people are photogenic. I'm anything but. Perhaps two pictures of me have been taken in the past decade in which I didn't look completely awful. I do not number my yearbook photo nor the one printed in the Campers' Paradise newsletter (not the one I write -- the glossy, P.R. one) among those. All of this has been on my mind lately, due to a number of converging discussions with various people on digital cameras and such.
I've been camera-shy pretty much as long as I can remember. And while my really low body image may have helped contribute to that, in recent years, I have reason to believe that it predates that. Initially, at least, I was camera-shy for other reasons. I'm not sure what they were, although I have a suspicion or two. (A partial memory of a fairly tense posed photo session with my siblings comes to mind, for instance.) At any rate, for whatever reason, I've always been self-conscious, and I've never liked having my photo taken. In more recent years, of course, this has been bolstered by the fact that, well, I hate the way I look. And I have this crazy belief that photos should have some sort of esthetic appeal, which would be utterly shattered by having Yours Truly in the frame.
This wasn't helped any a couple of years ago, when the Campers' Paradise put together a short video montage of people and places around the camp. I was featured for about five seconds. Subsequently, a couple of Upper Staffers agreed that, in it, I bore a strong resemblance to the standard depiction of Christ on the Cross. How nice.
I also don't swim. Never have. Probably never will. Which makes it a bit ironic that I now work at a camp in which the two Olympic-sized pools are one of the biggest draws, and in which everyone goes swimming twice a day. I'm glad I was never a camper there; I would have hated it. Anyway, this is partially due to the fact that I just plain don't have any interest at all in swimming, partially due to the fact that I can think of dozens of reasons against developing any such interest, and partially due to the fact that the idea of going around 90% naked doesn't appeal to me in the least. Short-sleeved shirts are about my limit when it comes to showing skin, and even that has made me self-conscious on occasion. For that matter, one reason why I keep going back to my doctor with the slightly sadistic sense of humor is that he lets me keep my clothes on. He's told me how to self-examine myself for hernias, and I've pretended to have understood what he was talking about, and, other than that, he's basically left me alone during my annual checkups. (The main reason I keep going back to him, however, is that I don't believe in taking medicine unless it's absolutely necessary, and he has similar feelings. He doesn't prescribe medicine just for the sake of treating symptoms, or to make it look as if he's doing something. That's remarkably rare in this day and age...)
I thought I'd be arriving at a point when I started all this, but I don't really have one. Sorry about that.
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