I have $20 that says…

…you’d be hard pressed to find a blogger who hasn’t hidden behind their sunglasses at some point in time. God, I’m sure if I did some analyzing on my side here, with posts up pretty much every Monday through Friday for the past 8 years, I’d have sunnies on in 90% of those photos. Many times in situations where sunglasses weren’t even warranted (yes, you can cue this song now).

Influencers are to sunglasses as the Patriots are to the Super Bowl at this point.

But why? As someone who takes photos of herself every day and usually doesn’t like the act of it, sunglasses are my way of easing the process, making it bearable for someone who just doesn’t like being in front of a camera. An odd confession for someone in my line of work, but it’s true. I’ve always hated being in photos and here’s why…

When I take photos, there’s a bunch of things I see: the scar in my left eye brow from a childhood accident (I was jumping on my parents’ bed and fell off hitting the bed frame), a bunch of randomly placed freckles that I’ve come to both love and resent over the years, leftover acne scars, my eyes that just appear “sleepy,”, a nose that I wish could be enhanced using Nose fillers, and a jawline that I wish was more defined.

To be honest, I have been insecure about my nose for as long as I can remember. Of course, thanks to plastic surgery and cosmetic procedures such as fillers and botox, it is now much easier to get a more aesthetically pleasing nose. Just the other day, a good friend of mine told me that she was thinking about getting a Non surgical nose job. Ultimately, life is all about doing things that make you happy, and if changing something about your appearances makes you feel better about yourself, then I am all for it.

As for my own insecurities though, to be fair, these aren’t things that keep me up at night and I’m completely aware they don’t define me as a person either. I’m healthy and alive, with a long list of other blessings to be thankful for that I won’t go into detail here, but I’d be amiss if I didn’t admit these so-called “flaws” certainly make me self-conscious at some point in time (especially in this line of work), hence the sunglasses serving as a crutch to which I could ease my insecurities.

Just recently, I stared ditching my sunglasses occasionally for shoots (probably at the coaxing of my assistant, Nora) and surprisingly received quite a few reader comments from you guys who noticed, including this one that made me stop and think about all of the seemingly BS insecurities I’ve listed above:

“Something happened. You seem happier, more free, showing your beautiful face more, not behind the sunglasses. Something happened and you are only more gorgeous because of it. Love.”

The word I focus the most on in that comment is “free.” And I think that’s largely what we fail to realize about our own insecurities. We give them the power to control us — we fuel them, we give them weight, we allow them to imprison us. We’re free to either allow that to happen or not.

Now, this post isn’t some manifesto about how I’ve kicked all of my insecurities by dropping sunglasses (God, if it were only that easy, right?), but it has made me realize that there’s beauty in the messier, insecure aspects and I’d much rather live life that way. To not hide or shy away from it but to embrace it. I’ve kicked myself in the past for not fitting an image of perfect (perfect daughter, perfect student, perfect employee), exhausted myself in doing so, and realized, what a terrible waste of time. After 31 years, I know now I’d much rather befriend the person who doesn’t aim for perfect, but aims for real. After reading some of last week’s reader survey results, it sounds like you do as well?

This post is perhaps the start of another longer discussion about the perceptions of perfection (and even the perceptions of accepted imperfection that I think seem to be cropping up online) so I’m sorry if I’m rambled in slightly incomplete thoughts here — I just wanted to spit it all out, as it’s something I’ve been marinating in lately while dealing with life situations that hardly fit in a “perfect Instagram” photo.

I’d love to hear from you guys though: what things make you insecure and how do you flip it the middle finger?