Selfies, expression and Shame

It has been forever, or at least more than a year, since I wrote my last blog posts. My latest post was about selfies and insecurity, and what do you know? That is where I am picking this blog back up, as well!

I think the reason why I didn't blog for so long was that I felt like my words, my ideas, were not needed in a vast pool of fantastic bloggers. What could I possibly add ..?

Looking back, I like my previous blog posts, though they were a bit too inspired by other bloggers that I admire. I have a tendency to, when I am fascinated with someone, I often try to become them. 

So I tried to express myself the way that they express themselves, which is understandable, but of course: impossible. 

Ultimately the only person we can truly express is our old, own selves.

And how can that ever be a waste of time? Nobody else has done it before, because nobody else can.

It's very cliché, of course, but clichés exist for a reason. It's too bad that we hear them so often we forget what they are really all about; which is, pretty much, all the important stuff in life.

So that is my goal now: expressing myself, my way. 

I feel I am better equipped to do that now than I was last year. I am closer to self-acceptance. 

It's another cliché! Accept yourself!

We hear it constantly, yet we are not taught how to be whole in any sort of way.
 
To accept ourselves mean accepting all of ourselves. Of course!

To me, there has always been a vast space between what I am and what I wish I was. 
I always tried to figure out who I was (kind of a must if you want to express yourself), but that is a process.

Looking into my own self has been like looking into a calaidoscope of personalities. 

We are all so complex that it can be confusing. When we look into the vastness of our inner being, we meet pieces of ourselves and others that are difficult to accept. That we can't accept. 
And we meet contradictions that make us struggle internally. 

How can I be this AND this at the same time, we wonder? 
We reflect upon our lives and what we have done in the past. We are haunted by mistakes that we have made. 
I did this or that, does that mean that I am not a good person? Does it make me a bad person?

When I was a kid, my parents told me, that there is not a single idea that I can think of, that someone else hasn't had already.
I remember wrecking my little brain for an idea that would prove they were wrong. But when I couldn't, So I accepted this as truth.

Now I think it's hilarious. On the contrary; since we are so complex, each and every one of us must have something to say that no one else can or ever has.

Byt the question is: Will we? Will we speak? And if we choose to do so, then why?

My biggest passion is to help de-mystify all the things that I have really, really struggled with when I was growing up. I was extremelty ashamed of myself, my body and my sexuality.
It is all that I can do to share it with the world now, so that at the very least, other people have a chance of reading it and realizing that if they feel that way, they are not alone.

Because we are all not that different.
 

Snow White (2019)


Now, I will finally get into the reason I started writing this post in the first place.
The inspiration came from my friend, Ro Aliaga. 
I recently became familar with her work, and you can check her out on her very inspirational page - right here: https://www.rosealiaga.com/

Ro Aliaga <3

Ro has inspired me in more ways than I can mention, but the one thing she has done for me that has changed my life -  is really seeing me. 

In later years, I felt a strong need to rid myself of all beauty standards, and that was my "humble" goal for 2018 and well into 2019.
I was tired of listening to voices that I knew was planted in my head: You need to be thinner! More beautiful! More this, less that, blah blah ...

After years of struggling to obtain perfection, I was finally ready to say no to all of that and focus on the things that actually mattered to me, and that I had neglected while focusing on my appearance. 

It has been an exciting journey so far, and I wouldn't have done anything differently. 
I had some creative ideas of how to heal myself: I was  a croquis model, had nude pictures taken, let my my body hair grow, painting my cellulite and my genitalia, and I didn't wear makeup for a year. (see past blog posts for more on this).

There is a need to radically confront the brainwashing we all experience, because the brainwashing IS radical. We are taught that if we look perfect, our lives will be great. And if we don't ... well, we're fucked!
This is for obvious reasons a big problem for many men and women all over the world.
Me included!

Being the extreme person that I am, it's not for me to go slowly ahead with anything, so I decided I needed to REJECT THESE IDEAS ABOUT PERFECTION AND BEAUTY- completely! 

The need to completely ignore beauty standards, however, led me to silence the part of me that has learned that we need to look a certain way to be worth something. 
I tried to shut that part down, instead of listening to it. 
I was sick of hearing voices that I knew were telling me lies. (Because like to many other people, I know that looks don't actually matter.)

I learned that the part of me that wants to look perfect - can't be silenced. 
It can't be removed. It a part of me, the same way that all the parts of me that I am proud of is a part of me. 
None of these parts are the whole story.

Our minds and hearts consists of these little pieces. So many personalities and voices are hiding in there; it's mindblowing. 

And some of the personalities are easier to love than others.

I was really annoyed when I found the insecure personality that wanted to look perfect and be loved and desired for it. It was not going away! Why not?!

I tried to reason with it: Are you crazy? What are you going to do when you grow older? When your body isn't perfect anymore? Do you really want to sell yourself, sell your body, online? No, you don't! 
I did not let it speak to me at all.

It tried to tell me why it had this need, but I shut it down, locked it away and never listened. 

But those parts, the ones we lock away ... they are the ones that will scream the loudest. 
We need to hear them. 

I believe this.

But we have to accept that we can't always be ready to listen. That is perfectly fine. Sometimes, as in my case, the way to listening is longer; more complex. Sometimes it's not as simple as listening. 

So I love my journey, but it didn't end in 2018. 
It has continued ever since. I have so much I want to share, this time, more in my own voice - or, my own voices. 

Mori with her Kazuo-uzi :)


Back in 2014/15, I took selfies every day, and posted them constantly to get attention. 
(On a side note, selfies are, to this date, my most popular posts, so it is not strange that we as human beings tend to like posting selfies. Other pictures of art, food, nature, dogs, do not get half the attention as a good selfie. That is just the way it is). 

Graveyard Fairy, photo by Astrid Ubaghs

Unsurprisingly, the Queen of Selfies (I was referred to as such at the time), received some pretty harsh criticism:

"What are you posting so many selfies for? You are inconveniencing other people. Your selfies are too sexy. What if people don't want to see them?" 

The words were hurtful. They came from very few people, but that didn't matter. They hurt and they stuck.

I started taking less selfies. I started feeling like my selfies were not of interest to anyone or anything, and that I was inconveniencing other people with them.

I knew that if people didn't want to see them, they could always unfollow me, but I felt discouraged anyway. 

I am not saying that posting selfies excessively is necessarily a good thing; but what Ro has taught me, to return to that, is that expression in all its forms is valid.

In 2020, I again felt the need to be seen in more ways than just one.

I took some selfies that stirred up old emotions, and the voices were there immediately:

Don't post that! It is too sexy! What will people think?

But I also felt that there is a need for a person, any person, to express themselves in a versatile way. 

So I posted a selfie. 

It was staged. It was angled. 

It wasn't edited, though, but I was perfectly aware that it expressed a sexier side of myself than I had shared in a long time. 

It was the traditional kind of sexy. Nothing crazy, at least I didn't think so, but it did display the qualitites that might make it popular with the opposite sex. I had avoided this kind of pictures for many reasons, for a long time. 

For years and years, I didn't see myself as a sexual being at all. I shunned my sexuality and was pretty much asexual for a very long time. 

I was worried about the reception that kind of photo might get. The fear of being pointed fingers at: you're too this or that!

"Madonna" selfie, 2020
I realized that my fear of Judgment prevented me from posting the photos I wanted to post.
For years, I had posted photos that I thought other people would want me to post!

What the Hell?!

So I looked inward and I thought: What do I think? 

And that is an interesting question!

Because when you care a lot about other people and their opinions, like me, then oftentimes you just don't get to the point where you say: 

STOP! THIS IS WHAT I THINK. I don't care if you agree. This is what I think and feel.

We can barely have a thought to ourselves in a world where everything is shared with everyone. Things have become difficult like that! If you share something, EVERYONE will know it. It's not like back in the days before the internet. Or actually, I grew up in Slagelse, a one horse town XD Where everyone pretty much knew anything, anyway. 

I asked myself: Does this express something about me that I need to express? 

Because I know by now that my life and soul is in this one thing: EXPRESSION.
I got my answer: YES! This picture says: I will post what I want. If you don't like it, then don't look at it. It's not my problem! 

I was excited and I was scared. Would people criticize me again? Would I be OK if they did? 

And then, the comments and hearts and happy thumbs came pouring in!

And they were from a very diverse group of people!  
I realized this with joy as I went through the feedback. It didn't come from just from what you would expect to be the standard audience.
They were from strong, powerful women, too, women I follow and admire for their bravey and their integrity.

Women who know to build each other up with love; not tear down out of fear. 

One of these women was Ro. She wrote me this wonderful comment:

"You are a divine being! And yes, all your facets are equally beautiful and need to be seen. Thank you so much for sharing yourself with the world."

I read the words with a feeling of disbelief. It was a life-changing moment for me. I wasn't dirty. Or too sexy. Not flashy. Not too much. 
A divine being. 
I was dumbfounded. I read the message over again.
Was she for real?
And she was. 

Lips (2019)

The encouragement made me go further and I started expressing myself through selfies again. 
I tried on different personalities in them. I was back in my right element!
THE DRAMA QUEEN!
When I look through my Instagram, I found (to name a few that I find interesting):

A "Madonna"-selfie, wearing a black bathing suit, fish net stockings and knee socks (did Madonna even ever wear that ..? I don't know. But I don't know what else to call it XD). 

A Snow Queen selfie, in which I painted my lips back and wore big, white eye-lashes.

A cute Goth.

A darker side was expressed when I made my own little photo shoot with my husband, combining movement and masks

A baby doll in high heels.

A yogi.

I expressed my crazy side in my original character, Morika Satsujin, whom I created with my student, Mathilde, who got me into cosplay and role playing in the first place.
Wisdom comes in  many ages and forms, and we had so many talks about expressing personality through various roles. 
I especially enjoy being Morika these days, because I see her as my teenage self, to a certain degree. 
In our cosplay, Morika falls in love with a psychotic boy in Battle Royale, and confesses her love to him. 
When he doesn't love her back, she loses her mind, chops his head off and drags it around, thinking of it at her boyfriend.

Murder-Morika - selfie, 2020

I never chopped anyone's head off, but I identify with Morika a lot, anyway. Maybe I will write an entire blog post on her!

Ro and many other wonderful people gave me the courage back to express myself AS I AM.

That is not a static thing. Each day is different. The expectation that we need to be the same thing each day is totally unreal.

With this post, I encourage everyone else to also break the learned patterns of thinking that are holding us back. They are only that. We have the power to be who we are.  

We are fucking limitless when we embrace ourselves and our many facets!

If we can do that - if we can love our light as well as our darkness, if we can accept ourselves AS WE ARE and let others do them same -
Then, we are powerful.
So let's encourage each other to express <3

The Snow Queen/Molly Dixon, 2020


I will end this post with a new comments I just received from Ro:

"I am so happy that you are healing and overpouring that confidence and fire that was always there. I feel new worlds of possibilities opening for you. You're the embodiment of a True Artist, a living Masterpiece ... you are your most beautiful ever-evolving work of art. Thank you, Thank you, I love you."

And I love you <3 


/Christina

Comments

  1. Kære,, du har den mest PERFEKTE krop, efter min smag ! Undskyld jeg kikkede SÅ meget.. :) knus

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Artist Talk

Den Lille (croquis) Havfrue

UNSEEN - a glimpse into my erotic sketchbook