I almost didn’t write this…

I’ve been putting off writing this for several weeks now. I wrote before Christmas about a photo shoot for a national magazine for a feature on success through social media. Well, the magazine was published a week or so later, and they kindly sent me a pdf of the article for me to share with you guys.

Note that I didn’t for quite some time.

Why I kept quiet about it

Well, in short, I almost threw up in the middle of the supermarket when my husband and I found it. I’m not joking; it was an intense and very unpleasant physical reaction. A five second glance at the feature made me think the following things:

1: Oh my God I look awful
2: Do I honestly look like that?
3: If I look like that, I never want to leave the house again
4: This clearly means I’m more shallow and vain than I previously thought
5: I hate myself

Not a good start. It didn’t help that I had a dental appointment straight after, so I was pretty nervy anyway. By the time I got to the waiting room I’d made myself look at the article again and saw that the errors I’d corrected with the journalist (ones she said were down to the editor changing her copy) were still in there and that the “Emma’s Podcasting Guide” box bore no resemblance whatsoever to the tips I gave in the interview – and were in fact poor advice – but I’ll get to that later.

I felt tearful. Stupid. Ugly. I texted my best friend who was wonderful, I was then told I’d have to have my wisdom teeth out at the hospital at some point soon and by the time I got home, I was a wreck.

An over-reaction?

Yes. I did over-react – or rather, reacted as a normal person suddenly meeting the world of mass media for the first time. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not naïve about that world; I choose to ignore most of it for a very good reason: it’s designed to make us miserable and buy more stuff to compensate. But to actually see myself being processed and churned out in the machine was a whole new level of awareness.

Now time has passed and people have reassured me that I don’t look freakishly grotesque, just not like me, I’ve been trying to work out what to write. For a long while I wanted to list all of the inaccuracies in the article and put them right, but now, with distance, I don’t see the point, they’re only irritating to me. So what if it says I wrote 20 Years Later to express myself (yuk!) during a difficult time? Whilst that’s utter rubbish, it’s not going to change anything about the book, or whether people will read it. I got upset about that because it was loading an emotional agenda onto it, but I suspect I’m the only person in the world that thinks that’s important.

What about that ‘podcasting guide’?

Well, that really upset me at the time, now I think my over-reaction was aggravated by several factors: 1) it’s written in the first person, so it seems I really gave those tips 2) If I had been asked for a 3 tip podcasting guide, I’d have happily given one that would actually help a starting podcaster (in my humble opinion) and 3) the tips I gave in the interview were far more helpful – just about Twitter instead of podcasting (that’s what I was asked for).

I suspect there was another agenda behind pushing Blogger and Blogspot. So, just for my piece of mind, let me state here that I would never, ever recommend those. It’s WordPress all the way baby. I won’t even bother to correct the other tips, as I doubt it’s going to matter to anyone else but me. I’m being precious again, aren’t I?

Characters in the media

The focus in the article header is on podcasting, I see that as a tiny part of my publishing story, but they clearly felt I would be better cast in the role of someone who podcasted their way to success. I think that’s what freaked me out – even though that’s me in the picture I don’t look like me, it’s written in the first person but doesn’t sound like me. That’s a very strange and quite upsetting experience to have for the first time. Good grief, I sound silly don’t I, but it’s the truth. I’m a timid creature. It took a long time for me to be open here, in my space, this was the first time I was “out there” in a way controlled by other people. Does that make sense?

But it also made me realise, even more acutely, how practically everything we consume in the media is just a story. If they take a complete nobody like me, who has a real story relevant to what they want to talk about and still can’t help fiddling with it to fit their ideas, imagine what must happen to celebrities and politicians. How many people have I liked and disliked thanks to their portrayal in the media? Who decides who will be loved and hated?

It’s all so subtle. Take the picture of (not)me in the article (I know I haven’t linked to it, I can’t do it yet) – who on earth writes books wearing all that make-up, 6 inch high heels and a lurid green Dame Edna dress? I flicked through another issue which had a feature on an Olympic athlete “training” in full make up. Not a big deal? Well, yes and no. It’s clearly all silly when we stop and think about it, but when we consume stuff like this we’re not supposed to be in a critical mind-set. I suspect magazine editors hope their readers flick through, brain elsewhere, taking in the pretty pictures, feeling aspirational. I think on a subliminal level all of these images are designed to make us feel fat, ugly and boring and raring to buy the featured products to look like the pictures we see. That’s why I don’t read them. As the speaker in the sunscreen song so rightly says “Don’t read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.”

So now I’m a media whore, right?

I’ve been quite open here about the fact I avoid these kinds of publications. In fact, I actively reject the world they portray and think it’s harmful – yet I still went and had the shoot, didn’t I?

I can’t say I feel proud of that.

I have a policy of not turning down opportunities (within reason), especially those outside of my comfort zone, as I’m trying to not let my rampant anxiety disorder ruin my life. The opportunity came one week before 20 Years Later was released in hardback, the article came out on the same day. I did it to get exposure for the book, just like all of the other people who put themselves into the media meat grinder who have products, projects and causes to promote. I became part of the machine.

So am I now jaded and bitter?

No. I was freaked out and precious, I’m better now. I don’t regret the experience – the shoot itself was a lot of fun and even though I look awful in the article, I didn’t feel it at the time. I’m pleased, perhaps hypocritically, that I got the hardback of 20 Years Later in the photo, in fact, may I urge you to admire how beautiful it looks should you click here to see the article?

And if you’re wondering what I really look like when I’m proudly showing off my book, you can see me here, outside my favourite bookshop on the day I went to sign the copies on sale there (that was so exciting!). That’s what I really look like; freaky in a non-scary way, wearing my old hat, with a silly – and genuine – grin.

Tagged as: 20 Years Later, mass media, photo shoot