“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.” -Henry David Thoreau, 1854

“Now the questions that come to mind. Where is this place and when is it, what kind of world where ugliness is the norm and beauty the deviation from that norm? The answer is, it doesn’t make a difference. Because the old saying is true. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in this year or a hundred years hence, on this planet or wherever there is human life, perhaps out among the stars. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Lesson to be learned – in the Twilight Zone.”

Trying to pick a favorite Twilight Zone episode is a bit like trying to pick your favorite flavor of ice cream – impossible, but an enjoyable excuse to go back and revisit all of the contenders. Ultimately, if there were a gun to my head, I’d probably have to pick “Two,” in which the last survivors of an apocalyptic war struggle with absurd conditioning that would have them continue to fight for causes that no longer even exist.  There is a chill to the story that could only have been created in 1961 – and the whole episode satirizes my great fear that we are a civilization trapped by the inertia of our own increasingly maladaptive systems. But, if I were allowed a second choice, it would be “The Private World of Darkness,”  whose title references the protagonist’s life wrapped in bandages – bandages from cosmetic surgeries designed to correct her hideous deformities. The heavy-handed reveal is, inevitably, that she is beautiful by our standards – only monstrous because she lives in a world in which the monstrous is seen as perfection.

Beneath that mask is a beautiful woman who thinks she’s hideous – yet she is still apparently able to manage a harem of Chippendales. Then again – perhaps they’re the only thing that she has that convinces herself that she’s still worthy of being loved.

Although less lasting in its contribution to modern popular culture, Bruce Timm’s “Batman: The Animated Series” is a similar cornucopia of excellent episodes. While I’d guess the fan favorite to be Mad Love (technically part of a later series, but if you’re that familiar with the episode guide you’ve got bigger problems to deal with), my top pick is Mean Seasons. It’s a tough call, since the episode as a whole isn’t particularly memorable and the one-shot villain, Calendar Girl, who’s thematic villainy is based on seasonal holidays, smacks of painfully uninspired writers. However, the episode is really just a setup for the last thirty seconds in which the eponymous Calendar Girl, who was formerly a supermodel and who up until then has worn a mask to cover her ruined face, is unmasked and revealed to still be gorgeous. She, however, breaks down in sobs at the humiliation of her face being seen by anyone.  Batgirl then ponders why the hell the Calendar Girl is so batshit crazy – to which Batman replies with the (ham-handed, but no less touching for its paternal guidance) commentary that she lost the ability to see anything but her own flaws.

One of the more frustrating things about not being able to judge your own attractiveness and worth is that you put too much stock in the opinions of others – an off hand comment can ruin your day.

Being attractive and feeling attractive are very different beasts. On one side of the equation that’s very good news.  One of the things that struck me from my year in Scotland was the way that downright ugly girls would strut like supermodels – and seemed to genuinely believe their own hype. (This is not to imply that there weren’t many conventionally gorgeous women in Scotland, just that even the conventionally unattractive ones were convinced of their own irresistibility.) Likewise, I am intensely jealous of the people who can publicly don swimsuits (or post photos of their adventures for anyone in the world to see) despite bodies that don’t meet even the loosest criteria for being beach-ready. The point is that there are lots of people who aren’t conventionally attractive, but who believe they are . . . and thus have all the happiness that brings. Sadly, there’s another side to the equation – made of people who are attractive (or who are at least neutral) and yet who look in the mirror and can’t see it.

Theoretically, this photo shoot was supposed to demonstrate to me that fact that ten pounds of weight gained as upper body muscle mass is okay – even though it’s still ten pounds of weight gained. But I still mostly look like a scrawny hipster.

I’m sadly stuck in that latter group. (Even writing this I struggle with admitting that I might be attractive – terrified that someone is going to call me out as hideous.) I can acknowledge the external data points that people say nice things about the way I look and women I find beautiful often want to be with me – but to the extent that I have an internal compass at all, it doesn’t point to anything like feeling beautiful. Maybe it comes from external pressures – the pervasive marketing that implies we all ought to look like underwear models or the fact that I was awkward in middle school, and maybe it’s just faulty neural wiring. But whatever the etiology, it sucks.

It sucks for practical reasons – the fact that I spend longer thinking about what I’m going to wear and yet remain less satisfied with the ultimate outcome; the fact that my whole day can be made or ruined by an off-hand comment (or the absence thereof) from someone I don’t even know; the fact that a woman who loves me might tell me again and again that she thinks I’m beautiful and I wouldn’t be able to hear it; the fact that there are rare times when I feel so hideous that I don’t want to be seen, much less touched. And it sucks in more existential, if obvious, ways. Namely, looking in the mirror and seeing something revolting just isn’t any fun. And then there’s the whole eating disorder thing which I know for a lot of people is all about control, but which for me really has pretty much always been about aesthetics mixed (with just a dash of self-abuse). This isn’t as horrifically dark as it sounds as I’m definitely describing my absolute worst days (which over the last few years were more frequent given the fact that sleep deprivation and stress accentuate all my other neuroses) and I think that overall I’m a pretty happy and a pretty satisfied person – I just think that there is room to be happier and more satisfied.

Apparently I have “sad eyes.” I prefer soulful . . . but it’s right there on the label – “fertile imagination – births monsters.” Still, I’m not giving up hope on the whole “think my way out of the problem.”

I’m also working on the theory that with insight comes the potential for change. Paradoxically, given all the stuff that’s been going on in my life since January, I’ve kept my neurotic bits pretty well in check – maybe because I’ve been a lot more aggressive about identifying and acknowledging them, and trying to figure out what’s setting them off and how to appease them in the least damaging way. I’m sure that there’s a Jungian narrative somewhere here about acknowleding and embracing one’s shadow self, but at the last minute I decided to become a radiologist instead of a psychiatrist so that narrative remains opaque to me. But it is a process. Maybe one day I’ll be like those Scottish girls . . . but I’ll happily settle for preventing intermittent self-loathing from undermining my day-to-day happiness.

Passport photos taken in Edinburgh in 1997. Proof that (a) my forehead has always been . . . Promethean, (b) that my getting mistaken at the height of Titanic-mania for Leo wasn’t as entirely ridiculous as it seems in retrospect, and (c) I’ve only ever had one look.

The thing is, I don’t really think I’m particularly unique. I’m a little unusual for a man in that my self-doubts are particularly heavily weighted toward body image – but I’m increasingly convinced that as a species we’re all a bunch of terrified children worried that the love is going to be taken away because we think we don’t deserve it. I’m a workaholic and have food issues – but I feel like a quarter of the adults I know are problem drinkers and God knows how many of the people smiling and nodding and seemingly holding it together are screaming and sobbing beneath the surface. I work with brilliant and extraordinarily capable people – and I’ve seen almost every one of them break down when their fragile egos were punctured. We’re all leading lives of “quiet desperation” in the search for something – sex, drugs, religion – that will take away the fear of not being good enough. It’s probably the human condition, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try to do something about it. Sure, the real solution is to learn to love ourselves . . . but those are just words, easier said than done.

As evidenced by the deeply suspicious saleslady at the Sunglass Hut . . . not everyone gets it.

I’ve enjoyed not being so anxious and self-critical these last few months and I’d like to keep things that way – which means I need a strategy.  I’ve got some pretty well worn psychic ruts, so if I want to stay out of them I can’t just sing Kumbayah and hope everything works out for the best. I also can’t rely too much on any one person – it would put too much pressure on her and it would make me more vulnerable that I’d like to be. Hard lesson learned there. Luckily, here and in conjunction with my various social networks, I think I have a decent plan to do the following:

(1) Get the feedback I need in order to recalibrate my own broken compass in a way that isn’t socially or romantically maladaptive. Sure, posting pictures of myself onto the internet might be slightly abnormal, or at least unseemly, maybe even a bit pathetic, but in 2012 it isn’t all that weird and if a “like” from a stranger makes it possible for me to believe the praise of someone I care about, then it’s a sacrifice of dignity I’m okay with. I’ll happily take the possibly “pathetic” of feeling good about myself thanks to a stranger’s praise over the certainly “tragic” of not going out because I can’t find any clothes that don’t make me look ugly.

(2) Keep me honest about exercise. I figure that if I’m committed to a plan that makes undesirable behavior impossible, then I won’t engage in those behaviors.  For as long as I can remember, my concept of ideal male beauty was dominated by emaciation.  It’s slowly dawned on me that I’m the only person who thinks/thought that looked good. So, I’m trying to convince myself that muscle bulk is a good thing. To that end I’ve change my workout so that it’s got slightly less cardio and obsesses slightly less over repititions. The series of pictures in this post were inspired by my looking in the mirror this weekend and realizing that my shoulders, chest, and arms are . . . well . . . bigger. I realize that I still look like an underfed hipster (see, that’s the self-loathing creeping in - it’s just looking for love and worried that it doesn’t deserve it) but by my standards I’m practically a giant.

Cashew crusted tofu on Mac and Cheese at Till in Columbus, Ohio. Still not ready to give up the kind out of the box . . . but maybe there is room for both in my life.

(3) Keep me honest about food. I have to eat, and in conjunction with #2 above, I can’t just barely eat, either.  But I’d like to eat well, and to eat genuinely good as well as interesting food.  So, in addition to posting pics of me, I’m going to be posting pics of my food. I’ll admit, I hate people who do this.  (Congratulations, you are going to eat something. What’s next, pictures of you flushing the toilet?)  Still, I’m trying to embrace a system, and if publicly acknowledging that I’m eating a a DQ Blizzard or a goat-cheese omelet on a bed of baby spinach seasoned with mermaid farts . . . well . . . it means that I’m sticking with the goal of eating, and eating things that I enjoy, or that I might decide I enjoy.

Anyway, that’s the long-winded self-involved introduction to the first of probably many sets of pictures of me.  If you’re the kind of person who enjoys being privy to what’s in someone else’s head, I’ll do my best to keep you entertained. Likewise, if you just enjoy looking at me, well, this will be the place to it. However, I realize that you could be spending your time browsing LOLcats and checking out tattoo failblogs, so I’ll also try to add a little value. While I am deeply uncertain about my own attractiveness, I know that my neuroses have caused me to nurture a unique personal style that ranges from the mundane to something that borders on cosplay.  Now that I’m a real certified grown up doctor person I’m supposed to look the part most of the time . . . so maybe you’ll also pick up a fashion pointer or two, or at least see what to avoid.

Thanks for listening.

A high dynamic range shot: it would defeat the whole purpose of this exercise to alter my appearance (these pics even include the yogurt I spilled on my man-cleavage early in the day), but they are as good an excuse to experiment with photoshop as any.

P.S. The vampire Ray-Ban pic was a reference to this:

“Mean Seasons” – go to 2:40

“Two”