Jean Marie Bauhaus

I’m getting some head shots taken today. Li’l Sis owes me some free pictures for doing her web site last year, so when I asked her if she had any decent candid shots of me that I could use on my new bio page, she offered to do a head shot session instead (and to buy me sushi for a belated birthday lunch, which, YAY! But I digress).

I’m feeling some anxiety about it, and not just because I’m carrying some extra weight in my face right now. Nor is it because last night I decided to trim the bangs I’d been growing out for the past several months and made a complete disaster of it — though come to think of it, neither of those things is helping. But mostly, it’s because these pictures are supposed to be a representation of who I am, or at least who I want to present to potential clients; and I really have no idea who that is right now.

As I try to decide what to wear to the shoot, it’s hitting me. I have this picture of myself in my head, and in that picture I have an adorable and hip (but not hipster) hair cut with blonde (and possibly some pink) highlights mixed in with the red. My clothes are cute but geek-chic, my nails are short but manicured, and, weirdly, I’m wearing glasses, with thick retro tortoise-shell frames that are slightly geeky but flatter my face. This imaginary me that I envision is nowhere near reality.

I tell myself that this is what I would look like if I had the money (and the time and energy) to spend on clothes and haircuts and getting my eyes checked. But the reality is a tired chick who trims her own hair (sometimes badly) and doesn’t even bother to do self-manicures anymore and needs glasses but can’t afford them and buys whatever clothes can be found on the clearance rack that look passable in public, who is doing the best she can on limited resources to look presentable but who just doesn’t have the time, energy or money to spend on her appearance. And usually, it doesn’t matter, because I work at home and my husband says he likes me better au naturale, anyway, and most days he’s the only one who ever sees me.

But that’s not really the version of myself that I want to display on the Internet for all of my clients and potential clients to see. So getting dressed today feels like picking out a costume. But which costume? Which side of myself do I want to portray? There’s the casual, laid-back, semi-fashionable business woman, which is pretty much the costume I used to wear to work every day when I had a corporate job. That seems appropriate, considering this is for my business web site. But then there’s the geek girl, the girl with the (imaginary) glasses who wears funky tee-shirts and no jewelry and loves to read and write urban fantasy and romance and is addicted to TV and spends the majority of her time online… which also seems appropriate, because I do work online, and I am a web designer, which is fairly geeky in and of itself, and also because it’s really ME.

I honestly can’t decide which version to go with. It doesn’t help that I’m having a bit of an identity crisis, what with the whole “I’m so psyched to become a mother — oh, wait, PSYCH! That’s apparently not for me!” thing that’s been happening with me lately, but that’s fodder for another post. Whichever version I go with, I’d better decide soon – I have another hour before I need to get dressed and prettify myself, and with all of the time I anticipate I’ll spend standing on the verge of tears in the middle of my closet, I’d better get started early. Hopefully, I’ll be able to come up with some kind of happy medium. Or maybe I’ll just take a second set of clothes and let Li’l Sis decide. Either way, one thing’s for sure — whoever I present myself as today, she’s going to have terrible bangs.