Controlling Your Self-Image Has Consequences

I was 18-years-old and on spring break with my college girlfriends when I got an email from GoDaddy saying someone had gifted me the purchase of maxiemccoy.com. That someone was my Dadio. Because he knew then what would take me a handful of years to realize, that my personal brand would be foundational to my career and what I would eventually want to – and get to – create.

Fast forward to last year. I’m in a cute little boutique in Savannah’s design district. One of my best friends (and original work wife) was in town visiting me for some rock-solid girl time. We were browsing through a rack of well-curated clothes, laughing about some variety of bullshit, and I made the quite innocuous (to me) comment as I held out a weird-looking dress, “But do you ever worry that something you’re wearing is giving off completely the wrong story. Like if I was wearing this, for example, I’m pretty sure everyone would think I’m the recluse aunt who’s never seen the internet.”

Without missing a beat, she responded. “Nope. If I like it, that’s all I care about. I’m wearing it for me.”

Reader, when I tell you that this woman changed my entire perspective in sub three sentences…I think about her sentiment every single time I try something on.

But you and I both know this isn’t actually about fashion. Or dressing myself. What she revealed to me is my overly sensitive attunement to how people perceive me, and making choices to cater to that versus just whole-heartedly going with what I like. I wear (and do) weird shit all the time, so I’m by no means suffocated by other people’s opinions. But sometimes what I like and how I want to be perceived align. But sometimes they dont, in the walls of a dressing room and beyond.

I realized that somewhere between that godaddy.com email launching my personal brand and the racks of overpriced Pima cotton on Whitaker Street, I journeyed a slow arc bent towards caring too much about controlling an image.

“Controlling your image is the opposite of creating art.” – Jason Isbell

It’s also the opposite of freedom. Of self-expression. Of getting lit. Of going wild. Of fully experiencing. Of standing up for yourself. Of trying some things on for size.

And it’s truly stifling across the board when self image takes over. It keeps us from making things. It keeps us from changing shit. It keeps us from putting it out there because lord forbid that’s not the direction we ultimately want to go. It keeps us from saying what’s really on our mind. Our greatest gifts come when we say what we really want to say, in the ways we want to say it, for whoever needs to hear it. Those greatest gifts probably aren’t the result of a tightly controlled image. And in the world of digital, in the world of social media, in the world of viral sharing…every one of us is publishing a self-image accessible for anyone to see and interpret.

My tendency toward control is probably why one of my favorite collaborator galpals always tells me “Just post the bikini pic already. Let loose! Be hot.” Bikini pic is an inside joke stand-in for sharing things that don’t always need to have a point, other than to show off another layer of human-ness.

So the last half of the year I’ve spent some time trying to make it all a little messier. A little more me. I’ve sat in the contradictions of having no answers but creating shit anyways. I’ve been working on less self-image, more self-imagining. As in, what are all the current and future parts of myself I can imagine and how can I embody them today? Turns out, my answers are all over the board: I want to make more art and be more things. I want to write books and learn the banjo. I want to take Spanish classes and have babies. I want to grow a killer business and bulk up my ass.

There’s a lot of art to make in many parts of life. And that art most likely begins at the end of a tight and even more tightly communicated image. I’m all about being known for one thing. But I’m even more excited to be known for one thing and the many other sides of myself that contributed to that one thing so bang-up fantastic.

So post the bikini pic. Woman on xx