Facade

The tilted chin. The flattering light. The hours spent contouring your face to perfectly refract the light disguising the imperfections. The moles, the scars, the bump in your nose that makes you all the more adorable vanish. We're veiled under Instagram filters until we look like a plague of Barbie dolls that have fallen into line and into a time where we no longer look like ourselves. 

It's all just smoke and mirrors, a grand illusion to disguise us in imitated beauty.

But there's so much more that the internet can't see. 

The eyes are the window to the soul, so why are you looking so hollow, so gaunt as you contort your lips into a garish pout. Imploring the camera with your glazed over come to bed eyes then complaining at the attention. The hateful torment. The creeps come in droves, they've fallen hook line and sinker for your facade. The radiant being that stands before them. But that's not you, is it?

 

The person that has a smile so iridescent it outshines the stars, the world doesn't get to see the wrinkle that forms in the corner of your eye that never fails to capture my heart. The lines at the side of your mouth when you laugh with raucous vivacity. 

Because we're not allowed to get old. Princess Leia wasn't allowed to get old. We're supposed to find this illusive fountain of youth. Just to appease the youth that doesn't realise soon enough they'll find themselves counting their wrinkles, just as we, tracing treasure maps of time across our faces. The laughter lines that remind us that there's still time to laugh more, to live more. And not shy away from the camera, not wielded by our own mortal hand but in the hands of a lover, or friend.

Wanting to capture the beauty, the vision that they see.

I'm hoping it's just another millennial craze that will fade away in time, with the over sized garish eye brows, fake tan and cocaine. I won't hold my breath.

We used to despair when we'd ask children what they wanted to do when they grow up and they'd reply “Famous!” Now we're contending with adults whose life goal is to become “Instagram Famous”. How empty must they feel? Knowing that those that love them, wouldn't love them if they were real.

Warts and all, they aren't going to be there for them, to catch them when they fall. When they fall of the side of a cliff taking the perfect selfie. 

Forgive me for being rude but I'm more interested on what happens in front of you. See, you've been rather naughty, I'm talking to you selfie addicts. The kids that passed around a dolphin until it died, the kids that think it's appropriate to take a selfie while they're in Auschwitz. Contrary to popular belief, it still happened, even if you don't have a selfie to prove it.

 

Amelia