Many Parts Make Up The Whole

The other day I was reading an article about the selfie generation. In a nutshell, it's about how vain and awful this generation (author's point of view) has become and that people are obsessed with perfection, instant-photos, photo-sharing, sex-selling self-shots (also cutely known as "selfies"), not-to-be-shared photo poses, etc. 

If you want to debate the idea (mostly defend it) of "sex-selling self-shots", google the article and bash the author there. I do think that what the author said held some truth, although she went a little bit far-fetched on some points and her position as a mother (housewife if I'm not wrong) made the article lose a wee bit of credibility.

No woman likes hearing this, I myself included, but sex sells. Period. 

People do all sorts of things to feel accepted, feel 'loved' (I'm not sure if love can be measured by the number of likes you have on your Instagram/Facebook photos), feel like they belong to a community or an interest group, and somehow a common ground for the pursuit of these 'worthy causes' would be, pictures of oneself in uncomfortable poses, duck faces, unnecessary cleavage or butt cheek exposure. Just because they garner more likes, more "participation".

I don't see anything wrong in selfies although moderation is really, really key. And of course, deliberately flashing half or even three-quarters your boob is really not that tasteful, at all.

***

So anyway, I'm not a fan of selfies (because I personally find it embarrassing to post such photos), and neither am I so pretty that I can take a selfie every moment and look runway-ready haha.

I do take them occasionally, and below is one photo I mixed around. Ok this is not for acceptance nor likes (for a fact, it's a bad picture, quality and framing-wise) but for super amateur 'art photography' I suppose, heh heh. I love conceptual photography.

I like the concept of imperfection. I search and attempt to replicate "perfect natural looks" but find myself somehow delighted in the fact that my "perfect looks" always go wrong when say, I start rubbing my eyes. Haha. Make up, is always make up. It's made up. 
Imperfection. This photo is actually made up of one photo, cut up and rearranged. The bottom-left photo features smudged eyeliner, and I found out that one side of my face is so much noticeably slimmer than the other, and my lip is of different length when split in half. (I didn't cut my face right down in half, but when you cover half of the lip, the lengths differ). My eyes also have different default expressions: One looks punched (ok I had an eye infection) & more open to stuff, and the other looks dead and holed up behind a wall.

***
There's so much to learn about the 'beauty' in yourself and others. I spent an hour sketching my boyfriend's picture recently, and I began to notice more things about his face than usual, a mild crow's feet developing at the edge of the eyes, his symmetrical parallel double eyelids, his lip is also of uneven size, his eyebrows are not symmetrical. 
Everyone is so imperfect in so many ways, if you choose to pick on every single feature or characteristic. Yet, there's so much more to people than the whole package put together. Not just the superficial level, but on the whole, so many different parts make up the whole person, and perhaps, bothering to understand more of each single part helped me realise why someone chooses to do things in a certain way, or chooses to be such-and-such a person.
There's more to people than the whole package. Because much more than many, many parts make up the whole. 
Go deeper.