The article that follows was written as a 5-7 minute prepared Toastmasters speech.
A necessary evil
When you run your own business or work in certain types of jobs, having your photo taken can be a necessary evil. This isn’t a problem for people who love have their photo taken. I don’t happen to be one of those people. I don’t run screaming at the sight of a camera or anything, I’m just more comfortable behind the lense than in front of it.
And it’s not just me. As a web designer, when I start a new website project with a one person business owner, at some point in our first conversation, I have to break the news to them that if they don’t currently have headshots, or professional looking photos of themselves, they’re going to need to think about getting some, sometime soon.
My male clients generally take this news better than my female clients do and it’s not hard to understand why.
We don’t have to think very hard to come up with examples, in person and in the media, of women being treated unfairly, even cruelty, based on how they measure up to some subjective ideal of how a woman should look. Or how their appearance is somehow related to their competence in a professional capacity, even though the same rules don’t apply to men.
The reluctant headshots
In about the second year of being in business as a web designer, I finally had to give in and organise to get some headshots done to use on my own website. I was so reluctant to do this, that I made, what can only be described as a token gesture. I found a photography student on Gumtree, and we did a quick photo shoot on the streets of Fremantle. She was a novice photographer and I was a novice model. A classic case of the blind leading the partially sighted.
Looking back at my body language in those photos, I actually feel sorry for myself. I look so uncomfortable and awkward, like a lone antelope on the African savanna, just waiting to be picked off by a passing predator. I reluctantly used those photos in my marketing for the next few years until I wised up about how where I’d gone wrong. Which wasn’t with my choice of head or body, I didn’t have a lot of say in what I was issued. Where I went wrong was with my choice of photographer. I mistakenly thought I was just getting someone to capture by likeness, like I would for a passport photo or ID card.
What we’re aiming for
But like toilet paper, when it comes to photography, you really do get what you pay for. Or more accurately, you should absolutely get the most experienced and supportive photographer you can possibly afford. Even if your entire household is eating beans on toast for a whole week, it will be totally worth it. Not for the sake of vanity, but for the sake of accuracy.
We’ve been encouraged to believe that what we look like is the most important thing about us as a woman. But our face has almost no bearing on our professional capacity. Unless our business is being a model of some sort, in which case, that’s a different conversation.
The goal with a professional headshot isn’t to demonstrate beauty. It’s to demonstrate the qualities that are noticeable about us as a person, for the purpose of illustrating them to someone who has never met us, in a way that they are able to instantly and instinctively understand.
Describing how people make us feel
If you think of the women who’ve made an impression on you, friends, sisters, mothers and grandmothers, partners or work colleagues. You probably don’t remember them fondly because of how attractive they were. Or maybe I just think that because I’m not attracted to women in that way. Regardless, you might remember them because they were kind, strong, supportive, determined, proud, fierce, clever, or funny. Or more than likely, because of how they made you feel when you were with them.
Think about what you can tell about a person when you meet them for the first time in a comfortable setting, when they shake your hand and look you in the eye, and listen patiently while you speak. In a matter of seconds, we are able to get a sense of what type of person someone is and whether they are someone we could work with, hire for a professional service, be friends with, or spend more than 5 minutes in the same room with.
That’s what we’re trying to capture in a professional headshot. To quote the classic Australian movie, The Castle, the vibe. We’re aiming to convey the vibe that we get from someone.
Now think about what you can tell about a person, who is in a fearful situation, perhaps in front of a judgemental looking photographer, or in the arena at the Colosseum in Rome, being hunted by lions. Their discomfort or terror hardly demonstrates their capacity to do your tax return in their air conditioned office in a pleasant and professional way.
A more realistic metric
Photos have another unusual quality, which is that they allow us to see or imagine ourselves, as we see other people. People often report hardly recognising themselves in photos, because they seem to look different than they do through their own eyes, in a mirror. But seeing ourselves, in a version captured by an artist who is expert at minimising irrelevant qualities and maximising relevant ones, or what they notice most about a person, can be a turning point for many women.
This is how I think of the term imposter syndrome, as a discrepancy between the different versions of ourself, when some of those versions inspire us with confidence and some don’t.
A chance to write our own story
In Neuroscience, mental rehearsal is an established concept. We use the same parts of our brain when we actively imagine ourselves doing something, as we do when we actually do the thing. This gives us the power to re-write potentially terrifying experiences before we have to face them in person and practice a version of those events as we would like them to be. Like imagining ourselves standing up on a Toastmasters stage, calmly and confidently delivering a speech to a friendly audience. Which starts with having an image of ourselves as someone who is or has the capacity to be calm and confident.
Seeing, really is believing, and when it comes to improving our confidence, in the person we already are, relative to the people we aspire to, or judge ourselves harshly by, having an accurate representation is a good starting point.
For people who need a little help to see the best version of themselves
When we’re not a naturally extroverted or confident person, getting the help of a patient, supportive photographer who is skilled at chipping away at facades until they reveal the masterpiece beneath, can be money well spent, particularly if it affects our livelihood, as it can for a freelancer like me.
To quote Michaelangelo, “I saw an angel in the marble, and carved until I set him free“.
