Dina Climatiano

Today’s offering is an attempt at a self portrait.

I also took a picture before I decided to alter it forever with very experimental color (i.e. whatever I found in the shade that struck my fancy at that exact moment).

Attempting a self portrait is very strange. I was tempted to try and make myself look better, like one does with angles or filters in a selfie. But another part of me just wanted to convey what my eyes saw, not what my brain was trying to turn it into. It’s a strange feeling looking at your own defining features and just taking them at face value (pun intended).

My double chin, for example, is usually a source of shame and embarrassment, a testament to my own shortcomings that I cannot hide no matter how much I try. Today it was just… Slightly more difficult to shade, but part of the ensemble.

My eyebrows, plucked within an inch of their life as a child growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, have never been able to recover their fullness and symmetry. Usually when I apply makeup I try to fill them out and make them look somewhat symmetrical. Today they were a useful reference point from which to map the rest of my face.

The awkward shades around my eyes, usually a sign of weariness and the passage of time, today were just interesting angles that make me more recognizable in the context of my face.

None of these were good or bad or ugly or pretty. They just were. Just as I am.