This is part of Traveling in Our Bodies, a four-part series that reflects on how women's bodies influence their movement through the world.
“Can you just… step back and maybe bend down a little bit? Perfect.”
After two minutes of continuous posing I made my way towards my fiancé to inspect his photography skills. I wanted to commemorate my 24th birthday with an Instagram post from my vacation in Phuket, examining no less than 50 photos of myself standing beneath the palm trees that line Patong Beach—50 photos that I already knew weren’t going to get posted. I gave him a tight lipped smile and said, “Thank you.” He noticed my mood shift. “You don’t like them.”
I buried my feet deeper and deeper in the sand, hoping to distract myself and mask my emotions. Instead of unlocking the part of my brain that relishes in being overly critical of myself, I shrugged.
There’s no point in lying, I thought. “No.”
And then the dreaded, “Why not?”
I can’t remember the singular moment when I started to feel self-conscious about my body. Some can pin-point it to an off-handed comment or the moment their favorite dress felt a little too tight. But Thailand, a place I had dreamed of visiting, was a turning point—I returned home with no photos of myself from the trip, and realized what I was losing in doing so.
The thing is, I love taking photographs when I'm traveling. I got my first digital camera at age 12 while on a cruise with my parents in 2011. My parents and I docked in St. Maarten and I was eager to get off the boat and explore. I immediately began memorizing every detail—the other giant ships that were docked next to ours, the bright sage flowers that adorned the bushes, and the cobblestoned streets that took us from one vibrant gift shop to another. After sifting through an egregious amount of magnets and mugs, we stopped in a jewelry store that also sold cameras—that’s where I picked up my Nikon Coolpix S2500. From that moment on, my camera was my honorary plus one. On my way back to the ship, I took photos of everything I saw.
Though my family members and friends were more than willing to smile for the camera from time to time, I learned early on that if I wanted to improve my photography skills, I’d have to be my own test subject. I'd pack my small handheld tripod, placing it on tables, rocks, anything that seemed flat enough, before I'd set the timer and run off with 10 seconds to position myself in front before the shutter snapped.
I took my camera with me on family trips to Paris, Rome, and Toronto. My camera bag would take up most of my carry-on and my parents would ask if I wanted to leave the camera at home to make room for souvenirs. But the photos I took always served as the best mementos, little snapshots frozen in time I could always revisit. They told stories and held the people I love most forever. They didn’t have to be perfectly staged memories—I liked opting for candids. My photos told the story of a life well-lived and loved. Capturing the mundane moments spent with my friends and family, and the people and places I saw on vacation made me aspire to be a storyteller.
I was a fearless young girl who couldn’t wait to be a part of the world and wasn’t afraid to be in front of the camera—and my journal entries captured that. I used platforms like Tumblr and Instagram as personal blogs and photo diaries where I could express myself and connect with the world around me.
But it’s not easy to grow up with the internet. At some point, the one place where I could express myself turned into the one place I couldn’t. What was once a space for creative expression had turned into a well-manicured marketplace selling self love. The need for perfect aesthetics on social media sites has made individualism and realism hard to come by. It’s a vicious cycle of pushing constant self improvement—you need x, y, and z to better your life, stop the aging process, lose weight, and balance your cortisol levels, all before 8 a.m.
When I graduated college, I began gaining weight. At first I liked it, I could see that I started to physically look like a young woman, but then it started to go everywhere I didn’t expect. My cheeks got rounder, my arms got wider, and more weight began to settle in my midsection. I didn't see anyone that looked like me online, I didn't have the physique of what I felt was expected of me. My inner monologue became cruel in my still-developing mind.
Preparing for trips became stressful. I’d stay up late looking through Pinterest to create mood boards of the photos I wanted to take of myself on vacation—the poses, the outfits—oh my gosh, the outfits. When it came to buying clothes for these trips, I was left disappointed and frustrated that my body didn’t look like the Instagram models I followed. I crunched the numbers in my head to see how quickly I could drop the weight before a trip to look better in photos. My Instagram was flooded with ads from fashion brands that pushed a type of body I couldn’t add to cart.
It’s hard to show up as yourself in a society that bombards us all with images convincing us there’s something we need to change. My insecurities have cleaned me out, leaving a shell of my former self. This version has completely abandoned making room for her camera on vacation. It sits on my bookshelf collecting dust next to the gift shop souvenirs I’ve been picking up to commemorate all the destinations I visit—souvenirs that I have plenty of space for in my luggage now I don't carry my camera. I barely post about my life and when I do, I feel anxious about how I'll be perceived. My camera went from being an extension of myself, capturing life from my point of view, to being a painful reminder that I’ve shut the world out.
This fear of not being perfect has hindered how I show up in my own memories—physically in photographs, and mentally. I can’t count how many times I’ve shied away from my fiancé’s phone lens on a trip. Instead of feeling happy he wants to capture these moments and share our life together, I sit bargaining with him over what photos to post and which to quickly delete.
Another year around the sun means another birthday trip to plan. But this time, I have a new travel companion—a film camera. As I hammer out the itinerary for a birthday trip to Fiji in February, I think about how I want to feel while there: well-rested, optimistic, and at peace. The lack of instant gratification from a film camera, I hope, will stop me from dwelling on whether or not I've gotten “the shot”—at least until the trip is over and the prints come back.
Until now, I've put so much emphasis into how I want to be seen or remember a trip that it's created unrealistic expectations where I can't just live in the moment and enjoy my trip. This isn’t a memory I want to continue recreating across the globe. I regret letting such superficial standards dim my own light, even on the most special of days, like my birthday. I deserve to travel and take up space as my most authentic self—on and offline.
