Picture Perfect

It’s always been about image-control. Nefertiti had that stylish hat to hide her deformed skull. No portraits of Henry VIII show his pus-filled gouty foot. The medieval miniatures hand-delivered to prospective suitors didn’t show what the aristocrats really looked like. If they had, kingdoms might have turned into republics a whole lot sooner.

Golden-Age Hollywood studios controlled the images of their stars, before Photoshop made it easy to erase hangovers or worse. The results were uniformly glamorous, or at least pretty--- with the emphasis on “uniform” despite ethnicity, age or context. I’ve always found it ridiculous that Rita Hayworth had to shave her forehead, as if a widow’s peak would look bad on that face. This is about more than looks, though. On Friday I drove past Mickey Hargitay’s old florist shop. Remember how the studios hid his relationship with Jayne Mansfield? Everything from homosexuality to drugs was painted over with glitter and rhinestones for tabloid perfection.

More time has passed, the pictures in the tabloids are no longer shiny and perfect, and image-control isn’t owned by the rich.

Nowadays, we have to take care of ourselves. It’s not just a matter of editing a resume or an anecdote into a favorable portrait. We spin our memories, and not always for the best. Compound the problem by putting it all online, and you have image-control entropy. We don’t broadcast our failures or our faults, at least not deliberately. Personalities appear in the comments people choose to make public. You’re not what you eat, you are what you post.

Robert refuses to walk behind me with a fill-screen and a bright light. Until he does, I’ll have to watch what I say.