It's All a Blur

My grandmother used to have a parakeet named ‘Blue Boy.’ Whenever I was on the phone with her and she’d laugh, you’d hear Blue Boy echoing her exact laugh in the background. She loved that bird. He shat everywhere, but she didn’t mind.

Blue Boy like most parakeets had a little mirror in his cage so that he could see his reflection and feel like he had a companion. Apparently, parakeets don’t recognize the reflection as themselves and see the reflection as an entirely different bird.

I could make this about AI and how it’s a reflection that makes you feel like you are talking to an entirely different bird, but no. There’s another reflection I’m looking at.

I spend a lot of time in meetings and hold a strong opinion that cameras should be on. Faces and their expressions are important. I don’t want to talk to your photo, I want to talk to you, as much as a video of you is you. I hold deep admiration for colleagues that join with no background interference, that let you see their workspace, their pets, occasionally their children who need something super urgent like permission for a popsicle.

I try to ignore my own reflection in meetings, but I find it incredibly difficult. I find myself checking my reflection for reassurance. No weird face? No mascara smear?

A few weeks ago, I started to worry about the bird looking back at me. She had bags under her eyes, her skin wasn’t as even as before. I’ve never been great about skincare (outside of SPF, blessed with the Irish ability to get a sunburn in a snowstorm) and I recommitted. I ordered new products at Dermstore and started using them regularly. No change.

Then we had a monthly all-hands and the transformation was astonishing. My skin looked clear, the circles under my eyes were invisible. And it hit me. I’d been working on a new client who uses Zoom instead of Teams. I didn’t have my blur on.

The first time I deliberately manipulated my image was for my LinkedIn profile. I’m terrible at taking selfies and have hated every professional headshot I’ve ever taken. Facetune was amazing, it took many, many attempts but I was able to get a decent enough selfie of myself and voila! I could change my make-up, my eye color, my outfit, you name it. I loved it. Like playing with a paper doll, I could try on all kinds of different Corrines — Space Corrine, Team Zisou Corrine, Judge Judy Corrine. And finally, respectable LinkedIn profile photo Corrine.

No one looks like their headshot in real life and I didn’t give it a second thought. But this situation felt different. The version of me I saw in Teams was the version of myself I saw the most, that I most identified with. The more true version of myself immediately registered as an imposter, as something to be fixed.

The realest part of me wanted to go full no blur. I’m committed to aging honestly, hopefully gracefully as well. But I couldn’t do it. It was too real, it felt unprofessional in its realness. Like showing up barefoot in the office.

And now I wonder how this real life realness is going to impact how people perceive me. Will my gray hairs look like weeds that I’ve neglected to pull? Will someone sic the aesthetic HOA on me with a fine?

We’ve seen the impact of digitally manipulated images ad nauseum in the social sphere. Young women having plastic surgery in pursuit of filtered looks from Instagram. Young men abusing steroids to have an action figure body they’ve seen on YouTube. Every woman I know dreams of the Judy Jetson call mask for mornings where the hair and makeup tax is just too damn high.

It’s so strange to get hit with the same dysmorphia, but in the workplace. Unlike Blue Boy who took comfort in his reflection, my reflection became the real me and the real me came up short.

And despite realizing the tragedy of this, I absolutely located the blur feature in Zoom and firmly set to ‘ON’.