What's The Opposite Of Catfishing?
Read my latest Ask Ugly column!
The next installment of Ask Ugly, my monthly beauty advice column for the Guardian, is here!
Hi Ugly,
I just turned 25. My long-term partner and I broke up recently, and I’ve been going on dates. My problem is I hate my skin. I have large pores, acne scarring, chicken pox scarring. Every time I meet someone new, I feel scared that they will find me hideous and think I catfished them. I’ve also been zooming in on pictures of my skin and looking at it in different lighting, which is worsening my insecurity.
Rationally, I know men probably won’t mind, because my previous partner – who had perfect skin! – still found me beautiful. And nobody I’ve gone on a date with has seemed to care so far. But I still criticize myself for it over and over again. How do I get over this?
– Not A Catfish
Allow me to introduce my signature online dating move: the Inverse Catfish Method.
Back when I was on the apps, I’d upload slightly unflattering photos of myself — an up-close, no-makeup selfie; a wide shot in a muumuu the size of a small circus tent — in an effort to meet men who weren’t primarily interested in looks. Bonus: In person, I exceeded all expectations! I’ve found love two, maybe even three times this way (the last one stuck) despite the fact that my skin, like yours, is marked by acne scars, visible pores and a smattering of old chicken pox pits (plus the burgeoning wrinkles of a woman ten years your senior).
If this makes me seem like I have some neurotic need to diminish myself before a man does it first, well… guilty as charged. After reading your question, Not A Catfish, I’d say we have this in common.
How did we end up this way? Aside from, you know, living under patriarchy, internalizing the male gaze and unconsciously inhaling the lessons of beauty culture like so much secondhand smoke.
For me, the Inverse Catfish Method was inspired by my ex-husband. A few months after we got married, he started making comments about my skin: suggesting I wear more makeup, telling me to “go on medication already” when I broke out. This charming new habit coincided with his decision to join President Trump’s mailing list and purchase a pack of “Make America Great Again” plastic straws as a “joke” to rile me up. Coincidence? Possibly. Probably not.
I wonder if something similar is contributing to your insecurity. You’re wading into the dating pool as the most powerful men in the world — and Kid Rock — are arguing that women exist to serve men; that our faces should be optimized for beauty, our bodies optimized for breeding. And it’s working! Data shows Gen Z men are embracing regressive gender roles and leaning right. The resulting dating scene is reportedly in a sorry state.
There is a possibility that some men are looking for a barely sentient Stepford wife with skin like glass, like a screen, like an inanimate object under their thumbs. But there are also many men who want a real, live, regular partner. On subway seats, in coffee shops, across candlelit tables, I see people with scars and spots and dark under-eye circles being held and kissed and loved like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Because it is! You don’t have to fix a single thing about your face to find that.
It also strikes me that your sudden obsession with your skin didn’t start with a change in your skin, but a change in your romantic life.
In Love: A New Understanding of an Ancient Emotion, philosopher Simon May writes that the loved one can give us something essential we can’t generate alone, like the feeling of being truly understood or “safety from a paralyzing source of insecurity.” Love “empowers us by intensifying our sense of existence and also humbles us by bringing to light our ontological smallness,” he says. It expands our world and puts the little things — like acne scars — in proportion.
But when love is lost, it shrinks the world — to the size of a pore, perhaps. It may “tear us from the familiar moorings of an ‘attachment’ or undermine our self-esteem,” according to May, leaving us “less able to be present” and scrambling to prove we still exist. We reach for something, anything, to anchor us.
Cue: hyperfixation on your face. Which makes sense! Skin is solid. It senses the outside world and confirms you’re in it and of it. It’s also the focus of countless beauty industry ads that claim attaining clear, poreless, perfection will finally make you the real you, the “best version of you”. Sometimes, they even frame skincare as a replacement for love. See Cutocin, a brand that markets its Social Exchange Serum as an alternative to the oxytocin-releasing effects of, well, social exchange.
But it isn’t.
The rest of my answer includes:
why “you have to love yourself before anyone else can” — the gospel of pop psychology — is individualist propaganda
some good news: the perspective-shifting power of love that May describes applies to non-romantic relationships, too
how to make your world bigger/your pores seem appropriately small
a data-backed argument for deleting the dating apps
and more!
Click through to the Guardian to read the full article (and if you decide to share it with friends or on social media or whatever, please share it via the Guardian link).
Thanks for helping make our worlds bigger, Jessica
As always a thoughtful response with loks of cool things to research. My app strategy was limited photos. Not overly focused on he physical and left all questions about sex unanswered. That reduced the amount of men who opened with "so you're a virgin" or you wanna try insert sexual act. Lucked out and found a feminist after only 3 frogs.