My experience participating in the ‘What I Be’ Campaign

When I signed up to be one of 84 students to participate in this year’s “What I Be” campaign, a big part of me hoped I wouldn’t get a spot. I wasn’t even one hundred percent sure that the campaign was something I was comfortable doing.

Like everyone on campus, I got an email from UGBC featuring the opportunity to meet with and be photographed by Steve Rosenfield in a campaign designed to “create security through insecurities.”

At the time I was feeling especially insecure, just coming off a grueling training trip and trying to fix all the mistakes I had made during my first semester. I thought that maybe this was what I needed to do to start feeling more secure in myself and where I was at. So, with some encouragement from friends, I signed up – but secretly hoped the spots had already been filled.

But of course, the universe has a strange sense of humor, and despite the incredible number of applicants I ended up getting a spot. I spent several days legitimately stressing out over what I would write on my face, and how exactly I would phrase my insecurity so that I would seem genuine but not “too this” or “too that.” I walked into my meeting with Steve knowing exactly what I wanted to be said. I had wanted the caption to be “I am not my nagging thoughts,” and I envisioned “constant criticisms” written on my cheek with two arrows going in a circle to represent continuity.

It felt perfectly sculpted, and I could tell Steve thought so, too.

He jumped right into it in the meeting, so when he asked, “What is your biggest insecurity?” and I replied with my perfectly sculpted response, he nodded and kept going, which took me by surprise. I had imagined that I would go in, say what I wanted, this stranger would write on my face, a picture would get snapped, and it would all be done – quick and easy. Luckily, I was very wrong.

He asked me a stream of probing questions to get me to elaborate on what I was thinking and further explain how my self-criticisms affected me. I’m not going to sugarcoat it – the experience was uncomfortable. There were frequent silences while we both thought of how best to portray this intense self-deprecation in a fitting context. Eventually we came up with the caption, “I am not my thoughts” and that written across my forehead – which I joked was a five-head, because I think I have a large forehead – would be “sometimes loud, sometimes quiet.”

I’ve never really liked having my picture taken. I always feel awkward. So when it came time to actually take the picture, I got really nervous. Steve had to tell me to close my eyes and relax. He then told me to open my eyes and quickly took the photo. He sat me down and showed me the photo, and asked me what I thought. Without even thinking, I said that I looked tired, that my face looked asymmetrical, and that my hair looked kind of weird.

Once I was finished, he told me to look at the picture, and not to tell him what I thought looked bad, but what I thought looked good. This was new to me. I realized I had never looked at a picture of myself and without thinking about what I didn’t like about my appearance. It had been a part of my self-criticisms for so long that I simply didn’t notice it anymore. I tried looking at the picture the way he told me to, and started to feel a bit better.

I wish I could say that I can now look at that picture, and other pictures of myself, and not see everything that I think looks bad. I can’t. I still notice first everything I don’t like.

Only now, I actively work to shut off that self-destructive voice so that I can focus on what I do like.

We all have that awful, irrational, self-hating voice in our heads that tells us everything we are doing wrong. Mine is very loud, but the more I accept the reality of its presence, the less weight it holds, and the easier it becomes to shut it up.