Claire Black: 'Why didn't you tell me I looked like a pint of milk poured into my little sister's bikini?'

Published on Thursday 24 June 2010 13:37

'How often do you change your profile picture?" asks my mate Mel. "I don't" "What, never?" "Never."

"Wow, that's weird," says the woman who uses an image of Donald Pleasance as Ernst Blofeld as her online representative. "But I have to say, if someone is always fiddling about with their picture I unfollow them."

Welcome to the world of online image management. It's a minefield. What we thought was just a straightforward picture for Facebook/Twitter/Mflow turns out to be a philosophically fraught representation of who we think we are. And the scary thing is, it hardly ever matches with what other people think of us.

"But why wouldn't you want to look your best?" I ask, feeling for some reason that I should defend the inexplicably numerous idiots who make themselves look like soft porn extras, all tipped back heads and slightly parted lips.

"There's looking your best and looking nothing like yourself," says Mel the merciless. "Who wants people to laugh when they meet you because they were expecting Kristin Scott Thomas and they get Cristiano Ronaldo?"

She's got a point. If you are pre- or anti- Facebook or Twitter you probably don't understand or care about any of this, but you should because this is no longer just an online issue.

Such is our desire to manipulate our image, lots of cameras are now made with screens that swivel so you can see yourself before you push the button. New mobile phones too, instead of having to turn them round, squint into the little hole and hope for the best, are designed so that you can see yourself on the screen before you take the picture. Easy. You can pout, preen, flick your hair or tip your head down to hide your double chin. You can hide your bald patch or your chunky bits, you can make your eyes look bigger or your nose look smaller.

But what is this saying about us?

Nothing good, I'll tell you that. Now, instead of sticking our spools into Snappy Snaps and waiting for the disappointment when we get back from holiday ("why didn't you tell me I looked like a pint of milk poured into my little sister's bikini?") we survey the damage in the privacy of our own laptops and edit out the bad bits.

And a growing number of us do a bit of touching up. Seriously, why do you think Photoshop has tools called things like 'pucker' and 'bulge'? It's so we can make sure that there is no unseemly puckering or unsightly bulges in our photies. Basically, this is the pleb version of the celeb's favourite - airbrushing.

There are rules. Use a regular snap and it looks like you're just not trying. Use a shot that looks like it's been taken in a studio and you're trying too hard. Use a cartoon character and you're asking for trouble. No self-respecting grown-up should want to be Jessica Rabbit. Minnie the Minx on the other hand might just work. Serious or seductive faces generally make you look stupid and puppies or kittens are just weird. Actually, I'm starting to see the appeal of Mr Blofeld.