Zoom Dysmorphia

Rigby Celeste

Zoom Dysmorphia

Staring at myself through the screen, I don't recognize myself anymore.

By Rigby Celeste

On the first Wednesday of the new semester, I made a bold choice. Behind the closed door of my bedroom, I sat cross-legged and unlidded a pink and black tub. Within the box were all my heavy makeup products: dark eyebrow fillers, false lashes, and bright lipsticks. I wanted to treat my online classes with the same ceremony as my first week on campus.

So with a fresh haircut and my favorite outfit on, I decided it was finally time to wear a full-face of makeup. Within my bedroom, the image staring back at me was saturated and lively. I felt sexy and daring like I could go out with a leather jacket and break some glass. I felt as if I was the star in an edgy 80’s rom-com and within my class, I was to meet a little someone who just couldn’t get enough of me. I felt good.

After all my pampering, I was late for class. In a rush, I found my Zoom link and joined without checking my camera. So when I entered my class, I looked down upon my computer in horror. I was hideous. My eyes were lost behind the blacks of my sad-sloped eyebrows. They looked like two tiny olives pinned a touch too high on my ham-slice head. My nose was both too long and too round, like a big fat teardrop. My laugh-lines, feathering from the corners of my bulbous nose, were practically black. Worst of all, between the folds of my cheeks, my perfectly lined lips now looked like a swollen, mutilated strawberry. I was utterly humiliated.

That Wednesday, my class was three hours long. I spent all 3 hours shifting around on my couch, trying to find a good angle without making my insecurity obvious. Three aching hours in intervals of five or ten minutes of self-obsession, followed by restless movement, and another 10 minutes of trying to stay calm.

Is it humanly possible to feel calm while staring at your own face? I tried to angle my camera so I was just two eyes in a box, but I was the only face cut off. I put my face back on full display, then slid the beautification filter all the way on. That only made me feel worse; I still looked like a dead blobfish. By the second hour, I realized I did not absorb a word of my professor's lecture. I turned my self-view off.

On-campus, I would only see myself at the tiptop of the morning. I would make myself perfect in front of my mirror, then go about my day. Within my classes, I looked out the windows and watched shifting trees, stacked brick buildings, and the tops of students' heads. I doodled the poses of my classmates around me and scribbled out notes. The only information I had about how I looked was: this morning, I looked good. On Zoom, you are forced to look at only one thing: your own horrible face at the perfectly worst angle. You just can’t get away from it. Any shift in the interface and your face might get smaller, it might move to the left or the right, but it never disappears.

As joyous as I felt that morning, I haven’t put makeup on since. I kept my beautification filter on through only a couple more classes. I kept thinking back to all those news segments following 16-yearold girls at surgeon appointments trying to look more like they do on Snapchat. I didn’t want to have an idea of myself that was so far removed I needed surgery. But my idea of myself is already removed. When I joined the classroom, the face that stared back at me wasn’t a stranger, it was me. I wonder sometimes if I was still in a physical classroom, would I know what my face looks like? If all I knew of myself was from mirrors in the morning and sunlit reflections on glass, would the image I know of myself be idealized? Would I continue to take selfies angled so perfectly that my true self was hardly recognizable? They say if you saw yourself walking on the street, you would not know it was even you.

Even so, a book is defined by its content and not its cover. My love for myself can only be better if I can give the same love to my zoom-distorted face. My pink and black box sits untouched in my bureau. I’ve traded out my lipstick morning routine for short stories by the window. No matter how strange my face might look to me, I can make myself laugh, and the joy that brings me is the same as the joy when I think I am beautiful. If I ran into someone who goes by the same name with a ham face and olive eyes, I only hope we might have a good conversation.