Okay, this post might get a little heavy for a dating blog, so don’t say I didn’t warn you…
I spoke a couple of months back about the weird video for Miley Cyrus’s hit single We Can’t Stop. And then came all the shock and pyscho-analysis tossed around after her performance at the VMA awards (which, if anyone had seen the video, was essentially a live version of the same weirdness). Didn’t anyone see it coming? Was all the tongue action in the video not a hint?
Anyway, I don’t want to add to the Miley-going-off-the-rails-like-Lindsay-Lohan discussion. But I did want to bring it up to point one thing out. There’s this general lack of connection I think in many of us – we don’t know the difference between the image we want to project in the world and the real us. We sometimes think they are the same, and sometimes purposefully (and especially online) create an image that we think “sells” ourselves better. If we are more something (sarcastic, beautiful, skinny, sexy, etc.), then more people will like us. More people will want to imitate us. More people will be interested in what we have to say. We just have to cultivate that image.
It’s not just celebrities crafting images – we all are. Every day over Facebook or Twitter or Pinterest. But where does all this image-making lead? Are we listening too much to the online noise, to what everyone around us thinks, and shaping ourselves from that?
And what does cultivating image mean when it comes to forming intimate connections? It would get exhausting for Miley to try and be sexy 24/7. Is she really that horny all the time? Sometimes I’m sure she wants to sit in her bathrobe with no make-up eating pizza and watching kitten videos on YouTube. But we don’t see that. We only see the image she wants us to see. If we know too much about her real life, her day-to-day insecurities or the absence of drama, we’d get bored and move on. Which brings me to the problem of forming real relationships under this pressure of image. Are you just one thing -sexy, smart, successful, or scatter-brained? Or are you more complicated and real than that?
There’s been a lot of talk about “hook-up culture” and how it’s ruining dating. Why ask someone out when you can just have sex and move on? Hooking up implies having an image that you’re not weak – that you can’t get hurt because you just don’t care. Sex is just sex. But that’s a lie, too.
It seems the people who prefer hooking up to dating are just trying to avoid real intimacy and friendship. After all, the alternative is so disturbing – what if you’re rejected, or your heart gets broken, or someone posts a compromising picture or video of you on YouTube because you’ve hurt him? All of these things are real, and scary. It’s much easier to keep up a pretense, to not let anyone in. It’s much easier to build a wall, and pretend all of the 40 million trillion Facebook friends or followers we have are the ones that matter. Not the people we form relationships with in our real day-to-day lives.
Images serve a purpose. For companies, it’s all about building a brand. But for people, it’s a little more complicated. Our images can take control of us, and then who are we really underneath? Miley probably doesn’t even know anymore, her image has been so closely guarded and groomed through her entire childhood. There wasn’t much room to experiment, or to mess up. But the rest of us are pretty lucky. We can turn off Facebook and Twitter. We can strike up a conversation with someone new. We can reach out without feeling pressured to be someone we’re not. We can fall down and get back up. We can apologize for our mistakes, and we can evolve and grow on our own outside of the public eye.
So maybe it’s time we did just that.
About Kelly Seal
Kelly is a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, CA. She blogs about dating, relationships, personal growth and what "healthy living" means to her. You can follow her on Google+, Twitter @kellyseal or through her website www.kellyseal.com.
[…] suspected with all the sexy costumes guys would likely go for the twerking, tongue-happy Miley Cyrus types (and they did—25% would be up for hitting on a woman clad in her wrecking ball or foam […]