How Polaroids are Helping Cure my Extreme Anxiety about Being in Photos
I used to hate being in photos. I still don’t love it, but I’ve found a surprising ally in my quest for comfort in front of the lens- a polaroid camera.
For most of my adult life, I’ve been one of those annoying people who absolutely loathe being in photos. I have been known to kick, scream, complain, hide behind furniture, or suddenly remember a very important phone call I need to make in the other room right this very second.
No, I’m not doing it for attention, and I don’t want you to tell me how pretty I look and that I shouldn’t be shy. It’s just that seeing myself in photos sends me into a deep shame spiral that involves wondering how anyone else can possibly stand to interact with someone who looks like a human thumb. Yes, my therapist and I are working on it.
My First Encounter with the Polaroid
Right before I moved from California to Germany I decided to throw a small goodbye party with friends. A friend of a friend lent us his houseboat docked in Oakland, and it was a perfect night of cheap sangria, laughter, and questionable decisions that I’ll treasure forever.
A few days before the party, I finally put film in my 80’s era Polaroid Onestep 600 Land Camera that had been sitting on my bookshelf as decoration for years. Film is readily available for it now, but it’s not cheap- about $20 for an 8-pack of film. However, I knew this was the kind of memory that I wanted to be able to look back on later after I’d moved and was missing my old life, so I packed it.
We were sitting on the deck, sangria in hand when the moment struck. I asked someone to snap a photo of me and two of my old roommates. We smiled, the camera whirred, and out came the photo. As it started to develop, however, my smile faltered.
Like many of us, I’ve struggled with body issues for as long as I can remember.
My self-esteem plummeted in the years after high school when my body started to leave its glory days of home-cooked meals and after-school sports and settled into the softness of adulthood. Nearly a decade later, it’s something I’m working on but not totally in a good place with yet.
So when the photo developed and I saw myself and all my perceived flaws sitting between my two beautiful friends, my heart sank. I won’t get into all of the various things about it that bothered me. We all have our insecurities, and I’m sure everyone can relate to that feeling in their own way. It was all I could do to swallow my gut reaction to chuck the photo overboard and demand another photo to be taken at a better angle. But when you’re 1/8th of the way through an expensive pack of film, you get what you get and you don’t throw a fit. There are no re-dos, no filters, no FaceTune to save the day.
So at this point, I had two options. I could either toss the picture into a folder and forget about it, or I could treasure it for what it was: a snapshot of a happy moment in time with people I probably won’t get to see again for a long time. If it were an iPhone picture, that choice would’ve been easy for me. It would’ve stayed on my camera roll, never to be seen by eyes other than mine. But I decided to consciously look past all of my head trash to the bigger picture (excuse the pun), and it was one of the first photos I put out in my new German apartment- where it still stays.
Lessons Learned
I know this particular example is pretty trivial in the grand scheme of things, but it got me wondering how many other beautiful things I choose to bury because it’s easier than facing my insecurities. It reminded me that it’s relatively easy to exercise more, eat better, and pay for expensive haircuts and manicures ‘till the cows come home.
But there’s always going to be a point where you’re going to have to decide to appreciate yourself objectively, as a person who’s doing their best and deserves to be happy and feel good about themselves.
So, if you too are on the journey towards self-acceptance, especially in front of the camera, I highly suggest you try getting out of your head and your smartphone and into the physical. You don’t have to use a polaroid- even just printing a photo out soon after taking it without editing, placing it somewhere you can see, and using it as a reminder of precious memories can start to completely reframe the way you see yourself.
