I’ve been thinking a lot about your last INNW series fic and the whole ‘flattering’ thing, it’s hard to look at recent pictures of myself in cosplay especially ones taken with a proper camera now a phone and it’s been even harder to post them online so everyone can see how fat I am, I usually take selfies at an angle it makes my face look less fat (never straight on) and most group shots I’m hiding at the back, it’s so ingrained to hide or try and take photos that make me look less fat.
Before anything else, these are for you. ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️
We have all of us, every single human of any kind of appearance, been done a grave disservice, in that we have all been taught that accurate depictions of us are only good under certain conditions. If we don’t match those conditions, we learn that we have to fake it or hide it as much as possible, or else we’re Not Good Enough.
I hate that. I hate that big ol lie so ridiculously much. If someone is a wonderful irreplaceable human being, then I cannot understand how accurate depictions of them could be anything other than good, by merit of being pictures of something (someone) that is wonderful and irreplaceable. There’s no weight limit on this! It’s not just for people with certain hair, or a certain skin color, or able-bodied people or people with noses shaped like this or eyes shaped like that! It’s everyone. All of the people.
I won’t tell you how to feel about your photos, or how to pose in them, because I am the boss of exactly one (1) person, and that person is me. However, it might be that someday, Future You goes looking back through old photographs, thinking about what it was like to be Now You. Future You might be sad to not find anything that shows what you really look like. “Past Me was important,” Future You might think. “Past Me deserved to be seen.”
I agree with Hypothetical Future You, for the record. But it’s hard to unlearn the lesson, and it’s not a requirement that you ever do.
PS I automatically love your cosplay photos without ever having seen them, because I have cosplayed exactly once, spending zero dollars and raiding my + housemate’s closet to dress up as the world’s most half-assed Marty McFly, and everyone who puts any actual effort into it is magic.