The Picture of Me vs The Real Me

Vs

In one of my recent posts I was contemplating my new black wig and how while wearing it I don’t really feel like it matches up well with the picture or image I have of myself.  Pat, a frequent commenter on many blogs, left me the following comment awhile back:

“you have been projecting blond for so long that dark hair seems like a disguise.”

It is a very interesting comment but I think it is backwards.  While looking at the pictures of myself in the black wig, it made me feel as though maybe I have been hiding by wearing a blond wig for so long.  Wearing my new wig has caused me to think about what I am doing. It is kind of hard to explain the feelings. Like by dressing as a woman, am I trying to show a part of me, or am I trying to show me, or am I just being me, or am I trying to create some sort of idealized version of me.

I tend to think the later one is occurring.

See…. what I think is occurring within me is that for so long I strove to obtain a female image.  Not necessarily a female version of me, but rather some sort of fantasy image of a woman.  You know, that dream look that so many of us all have.  This fantasy image of perfection for our bodies.  Well… I have gotten close.  Certainly not in real life! But in being able to know what to wear, how to wear it and how to photograph it well, I have come slose to pulling off that ellusive moment captured in a simple photgraph that shows a glorious flash of beauty.

But then I see myself in a black wig and I think, ‘hey, wait a second!  This is all wrong!  This is not the look!’  And it rubs me wrong.  What am I?  A look, captured fleetingly in a photo, or am I person.  A person, with positive and negative attributes, a real person, who is quite free to change the color of their hair if they so choose to do so.

And that feels like me.  That voice inside who says, ‘oh are you telling me that I can’t?’  That sort of thing kind of gets me more than a bit fired up.

So…. I am trying to push myself to develop a more realistic internal image of who I am.  Kind of like taking the fantasy image, and the real image and mushing them together. Being able to take a good looking picture is awesome.  But I often mutter to myself that it is all smoke and mirrors!  Pictures do not depict reality.  Many folks tell me how great it is, that I “pass” SO well!  I laugh!  Do you know what I can do?  I can take a pretty good picture!  But if you are in front of me, interacting with me, that fantasy will crumble pretty quickly!

And for me, it is that piece that I am becoming more and more comfortable with.  I am not that fantasy image, but I am doing pretty well with what I do have.

But… sometimes I think too much and over read into things.

Maybe I just prefer to be blond!

Hmm…..

Love!