Let's BeReal
Alexis S.
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I was inspired to create this painting, titled “Let’s BeReal,” after seeing a particularly silly photo of myself as a toddler wearing fancy sunglasses, which made me reflect on my changing sense of self since childhood. I loved how the photo of my cherubic toddler-aged self (now the portrait “stay cool” in my portfolio) was lively, colorful, and fun, encompassing the self-confidence and hint of sass that I had as a toddler, but sometimes lose sight of today. The 2000s-era sunglasses and floral motifs on the shirt amused me, since I would not have predicted that my three-year-old fashion sense could become stylish again with the rise in popularity of Y2K styles. In fact, if they actually fit me, I would wear those sunglasses as part of an outfit today.
That photo, and creating this piece in general, made me think about past iterations of myself, trend cycles today, and even our future in the digital age. It is a digital photograph that, like many of our memories and past selves, exists only as a bunch of zeros and ones until it is called upon to flash on a screen. It is, by nature, ephemeral. If we store all our photos, our memories, in this way, what happens if they get deleted, hacked, or lost in obsolete technology? What happens to my very cool toddler self and all the reminders she gives me about self-assuredness if that code is lost? And, perhaps most importantly, what do I want to remember about myself now, at this stage in my life, and how do I make those memories permanent?
Another inspiration was the app BeReal. A relatively new, supposedly revolutionary social media app, it prompts all users to take a “BeReal,” a photo taken with both the selfie camera and the back camera of a smartphone, at the same time. Users can then see what their friends are doing at that moment, a more unfiltered version of social media. It took off among high schoolers last year and continues to have a more relaxed ethos than, say, the painstakingly curated photos of Instagram. Because BeReals disappear within 24 to 36 hours of posting (unless you screenshot them), this makes them, and the sometimes ridiculous memories of taking them, truly ephemeral. The BeReal that I chose to paint was taken by my friend Ava during lunch at school. Everything about this painting is painfully trendy, from the 0.5 zoom of the camera to the fact that BeReal is probably only a passing fad that will fall out of fashion in a few years.
And yet, this painting is also exactly what I want to remember about high school. It captures a silly moment of me with my friends unapologetically engaging in trends because we are young, and it is far more permanent than just a social media post. Paintings were used to capture likenesses before photography, and they can last much longer in our fast-paced world, preserving the memories painted within them.
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I have struggled with mental health and an eating disorder, especially in high school during the pandemic, and making visual art helps me find beauty in the world and myself, self-soothe, and express what I cannot put into words.
