You know what has been the most visited conversation topic between me and my other forty-year-old friends these days? Our newfound terrifying gray pubes.
For my guy friends, not so much the straight ones, the fear doubles down when those “pubes” are on their faces, especially since every gay man in the world has decided they must have a super manicured “upper” bush to be attractive (to harmonize with a super smooth lasered ass) Including me.
But now, my beard is turning white.
And, with it, me entire sense of self is flipping, too.
I look at my semi-washed out face and kind of reject it. The black hair used to define my features, marking my jawline from my neck,
The gray is basically erasing them. Almost like in an analog photo negative type of inverted privileged disphoria.
Being a photographer, as with most of the issues I have with my appearance,
I like to pop the camera in front of me, set a timer and sit for it.
As a look at the lens and wait for the shutter to go off,
I try to stay honest to how I feel then.
I’ve learned that looking at myself externally, through the help of a camera,
always brings kindness to my judgment. Always.
Different than holding a camera phone with your hands and automatically scrutinizing
what the best angle and lighting are to take a photo of oneself,
Sitting in front of camera, pointed straight at you with no control of the shutter
is a humbling, vulnerable, yet always freeing experience.
My self-portraits have been healing me for years.
In this photo, the light was just the sun, I hadn’t brushed my teeth, my shirt smelled of fresh laundry and I was nervous about how expensive my rent is. When i looked at it i realized my personal notion of what a forty-year old Giuliano should look like is very intimate and it should not be put to any standards, whether on the genuine or fake side of the scale.
Ah, and as for my beard? I’m going back to dying it light brown. Fuck this. As my friends are plucking away their bushes, I’ve learned that we, now more than ever, should take full advantage of the access we have to tweaking our appearance and that does not make us dishonest. It is not about aging; it is about looking however you want. And that is just ok. Don’t overthink it. Cutting, shaving or letting it grow are all the same.
· This post is sort of a commitment I make to myself to go back to storytelling roots, to truth and to too-much-information. It is also a commitment to deconstruct the “brag-y” and curated image social media has made us partake in. Commercial photography has paid some bills, but it literally sucked the soul of my photography. The words client, budget and production make me cringe these days. I still love to shoot beauty, don’t get me wrong. But to make sense, they have to come with a story.