The recent love affair our culture has with cameras is baffling to me. Everywhere you look there is a camera, snapping or videotaping, (is that word even part of the nomenclature any more , since nowadays the images are usually being saved directly to a flash drive and downloaded onto a computer with nary a tape in sight?) Wherever you are, it seems, there are cameras documenting that you were there, a computer enhanced Hansel dropping crumbs to show your path.
The current adolescent generation has had virtually every moment of their lives documented by parents who are unwilling to miss a moment, so the constant invasion of their privacy by a camera or the posting of their photos and videos on the internet is unremarkable to them. While parents worry about a predator tracking their child down from online information, young teens are posting pictures of themselves nude, taken with cell phone cameras, and sent to their best friends. [I am not even making this up. I read it on CNN, so it has to be real.]
All this, I believe, is what has led us to the reality television glut we are currently experiencing. Among the most popular shows are those which take the proverbial ugly duckling and make her a swan, although there are some dead ducks that litter the red carpet to fame. Everyone wants to be a model; they are beautiful, they are sophisticated, they are wealthy, they have it all. Some of these programs are brutal, cutting down the hopefuls for our entertainment. And in the end, one lucky girl gets to do an ad and then disappear, never to be heard from again. Unless it is on a talk show, revealing her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
It almost seems that if your life isn't documented online, it can't be real. Every person on the planet has probably been online in a picture at some time or another, even if only by Google satellite, which I must say, is a little creepy. You can see my deck furniture in the most recent shots. That is a little more information that anyone needs to know, if you ask me. George Orwell never saw this coming.
But for some people, being photographed is an ego boost, something they seek out. My ex-husband was one of those people. Every time a camera came out, he was yelling, "Take my picture." And then he would pose, in what he thought was his "model" look. Well, I guess it was his model look, since he was a model. Sort of. Well, parts of him were, anyway.
One of the many ways that I learned he was in the midst of the father of all mid-life crises was when he decided that he was going to be a model. Mind you, he didn't just volunteer the information to me. I found out because I saw pictures of him in various levels of disarray, obviously shot by a professional, and so it was already a done deal by the time I heard about it.
Anyway, he was a work out freak, getting up at 4 a.m. so he could get to the gym and work out for at least two hours before going to his real job. He started out by wanting to lose a few pounds, a goal of which I was originally very supportive, but then, like so many obsessive people before him, he got carried away. He kept going, and going, and going, like an anorexic Energizer bunny, losing more weight, getting more buff, all the while eating ever increasingly weird foods, until the house stunk to high heaven and there was very little left of him. Which, if you saw what he ate, you might have thought was not unrelated, since it was mostly inedible....
Now, you may think the less of him, the better. Certainly, I do. But in this case, the thinner he got, the more delusional he became. Do you think they serve steroids at the salad bar? But I digress.
It was at the point where you couldn't see him if he turned sideways that he decided he was model material. Evidently, when he looked in the mirror he did not see a short aging refugee with no hair and bad clothing sense. He saw Mr. Cool looking back at him, and felt the need to share himself with the world.
According to him, he contacted a catalog whose clothing he admired (more on this later, it's hilarious,) and notified them that he was prepared to model for them. [It would never occur to him that they wouldn't be interested, and since he could sell ice to a penguin at the South Pole, I guess they bought it.] He went to a photographer at some point, who realized pretty quickly that his "best side" was not going to include his face, which should have tipped him off right there that his view of reality was a little skewed. That photographer shot him from every conceivable angle, in various states of undress, but in every picture I saw, his face is barely featured, while his best side is always clearly in view! [I know, I know, red flags covering the field, but after 20 years, you sort of learn to overlook....]
Anyway, I didn't know a thing about it, until one day a catalog arrived, and right there, on the back page, was a torso that looked mighty familiar. I will spare you the gory details of that conversation, it's not something I remember with a warm glow, unless it's steam coming out of my ears. In the end, Mr. Universe simply couldn't understand why I wouldn't be proud to be married to an underwear model. I will say right here and now, if you have to explain, it's a lost cause.
But about that catalog.... The ex thought he had the world's best fashion sense, and there are a lot of very funny stories to do with his clothing choices. I will share one, to show you how it worked. Or didn't work.
One afternoon, the kids and I were in the kitchen, when Mr. Peacock came strutting in the door after work. My ex never just walked into a room, he Made An Entrance. Anyway, he was wearing a new suit, an almost daily occurrence, and not one that we usually took note of. However, on this day, we all looked at him in stunned silence, because you couldn't help but notice. It was red, with shiny brass buttons down the double breasted front. My son summed up the situation when he said, "What on earth are you wearing? You look like a bell hop!" He was not amused. I am still laughing, still savoring that moment.
We call that his rainbow period, (among other things,) because he went all colorful for awhile. And I'm not just talking clothes. Orange skin. Seriously. Another suit was a hideous pea green color, but when I brought that up, he got offended. It wasn't pea green, he informed me, it was kiwi. Oh. Well all righty then, that changes everything.
Back to the catalog. It was immediately apparent with a glance that this catalog filled the needs of a particular... um, segment of the male population. The clothing, although pretty, had a certain... feminine look to it. But to Mr. Flare, it was all about style. We were wrong, we didn't know fashion when we saw it. Which is probably true, I admit, so I kept my thoughts to myself. Well, mostly. When I wasn't rolling on the floor laughing.
He ordered a lot of clothing from that catalog, but since we never went out in public together, I didn't really care. However, on one occasion, I did have the last laugh. It was the day of his surprise 40th birthday party, and we were at the neighbors with all three of his friends, and a whole lot of mine. The day started off well enough, he was surprised, but then he got chilly, so he ran home to get a jacket.
Well, he came strutting back into that party, and what a picture he made. He had ordered himself a leopard skin jacket with puffy sleeves and a little collar, and he thought he was a show stopper. Which, as it turned out, he was. Because our neighbor took one look at him and burst out laughing - deep belly laughs - and finally gasped out something about how hilarious of Mr. Birthday Boy to wear his daughter's jacket. Eventually, when our neighbor saw the BB's face flush to the roots of his receding hairline, he realized it was not Erin's jacket at all, and he tried to apologize, which was funnier yet. The next thing I knew, that jacket was in Erin's closet, although even at 11 she had more sense than to wear it, and eventually it went to charity. Although I have always imagined it was more to give them a laugh than to wear.
I was at WalMart the other day, and a mother was there video recording her daughter, who was in the most ridiculous get-up I've ever seen. [Well, not really, I have lived with Kiwi Boy, but I wanted to create dramatic effect.] Mom got mad at me because I got in the way of her taping, which, since I didn't realize there was a party going on in the middle of the men's socks, seemed a little unreasonable. And it made me wonder; to think about the wisdom of recording every moment of life, and whether or not we might be raising a whole generation of narcissists.
Although, in retrospect, I sure do wish I had been recording the bell hop moment....
