Economical with the artifice
Looking through my Instagram feed today, I sensed that many of the platform’s users are going through a subtle process of change, regarding the images they post of themselves. There seems to be more willingness to be down to earth and less of a focus on artifice.
I think this is a healthy development, since it means that more folks are opting for naturalness in presentation. Is it possible that the frequent use of video conferencing tools for communication across the world has encouraged us to loosen up?
There will always be a time and place for glamour. Some of my favourite public figures are among those who went to great lengths in displaying richness of visual and aural imagination. I remember one of them making a famous quote about the process of capping her teeth, stretching her hair, sitting for ages with the make-up artist and quibbling for hours over getting the lights ‘just so’, but even then she would look at the result of the effort and say to herself ‘How beautiful!’
How much time can anyone afford to spend on ‘scrubbing up well’? Maybe it is useful to see the joins more often.
The cumulative effect of this dimension to the ‘new normal’ could be more humanising than many things expressed with words.
