The After Shot: By Anna

Hello my darling fudgies!

Today's creative writing piece comes from the immensely talented Anna, who is only 14 years old. We graciously borrowed this post from her equally wonderful blog storiesfromtheyoung.tumblr.com.  

Please enjoy and give her some love :)

The “After" Shot

Do you ever feel like a “before" picture? Like, one section of those side by side comparisons of celebrities or people losing weight. You’re the awkward first picture, flaws everywhere.

Your skin is uneven and often a different color entirely when compared with the rest of your body.

You have some fat in your cheeks that gives you dimples but you’d rather have cheekbones.

Any bone structure that genetics have graced you with is hidden under a layer of extraneous tissue.

Your eyes are to wide, eyebrows uneven, pupils dilated.

Your nose is crooked.

Your lips are uneven and too thin or too thick,

Your ears stick out.

Your hairs a mess.

We’ve all be there right?

But wait, there’s hope! At some point in your future you’ll gain/lose some weight in the right places. You’ll acquire tweezers and concealer. You’ll learn to style your hair in a different way to hide your ears and you’ll cover your under eye circles. The second photo will be professionally done. You’ll be prepared for it. Before pictures are too often selfies that were just on your desktop and you thought “hey I’ll use this as the before picture."

I’d like to be that person who says “I think the first picture is more beautiful/ amazing because they’re not made up and posed." Unfortunately I can’t claim that. We’re conditioned to value the second picture more. We find them more attractive and would rather associate with the mature then the juvenile.

I’m not going to go on about media and the distortion of what is beautiful. But I will say one thing.

I wish those pictures compared the people we are, not the aesthetic values of our skin.

I wish they showed the trials we overcame. The things we lost. The people we loved. I know for a fact that if someone compares a picture of me now and one in ten years they will like the after shot.

But I’ll like the before. I’ll appreciate the clueless and generally anxious and depressed teenager staring back at me. I’ll understand the bags under her eyes as a personality trait, not necessarily a flaw. She earned those dark circles from nights of insomnia and uncontrollable crying and hopelessness. She survived them and even though she’s never admit it, she wears them as a sign of pride.

Maybe as we get older we just get better at hiding ourselves in pictures. We are more willing to cover up our scars and tuck away our flaws.

Or maybe we just stop having those problems and have only those that don’t manifest themselves on our skin.

Of course I don’t have those answers, I’m only the before.

xoxo 

Gabby