Of course not. Nobody ever would have thought of that.
For years, I have told the people who hack my phone and who otherwise invade my privacy to stop making assumptions about what my intentions are based on their ideas about the information that they have illicitly gathered. This is another reason that privacy invasions are bad; you cannot know what someone else is thinking unless you are that person. Nobody ever really knows what someone else is thinking. You can know what someone says and what someone does; you cannot know what someone is thinking.
When I took the pictures, I wasn't thinking of using them for Brainwashed Celebrity Aesthetic Retraining. I was thinking "This is fun, and it doesn't cost money. I wish that people wouldn't hack my phone. Life is miserable when people are hacking your phone."
Brainwashed Celebrity Aesthetic Retraining
🦉
I didn't attend a fashion institute, haven't formally studied fashion, and haven't conducted extensive informal research.
However, if passersby are allowed to offer help to someone who is experiencing a life-threatening emergency without having to fear legal repercussions for not being medically trained, then I should be able to write this page.
I shall begin with a question.
This is also a picture from my impromptu photoshoot on June 25th:
The picture shows some (not all, mind you, only some) of the spider veins which have been winding their way around my legs since I was in my early 30s.
Some dressing rooms have flattering lighting and some don't. I took this picture of my leg to show the veins. I know what I look like. I am realistic.
I spend enough time thinking about what's not beautiful about me. If I spent all of my time thinking about it, if I pared down my concept of what I "deserve" to wear and how I "ought" to feel so that everything I did was centered on the least attractive things about me, not only would I feel terrible, I would make myself uglier than I have to be.
Since I first developed visible veins on my legs, total strangers have stood or walked behind me and commented about them to each other so that I can hear them. It doesn't bother them that they're only a few feet away from me and that they are entirely audible to me. Both male and female commentators exclaim over them.
That is another reason that I know that the myth that the conglomerate has built around my beauty as a justification for sexually assaulting me with hidden and illegal cameras is a sickening, misogynist lie. If there were a way to measure who the most beautiful person in the world is, and if I were that person, it WOULDN'T JUSTIFY SEXUALLY ASSAULTING ME. I am so clearly not that person that the conglomerate's already insulting premise is more obviously a lie every year. The conglomerate invades my privacy because it wants to push me around. That's all it is, and that's all it ever was.
As far as how people think about what they look like is concerned; it finally occurred to me a few years ago that a lot of people hurt themselves by taking what isn't beautiful about them and building their ideas of what they look like around their imperfections. When the spider veins showed up on my legs, I could have thought "My legs are useless now; I won't exercise again because it's laughable to give these ugly legs anything that's good for them."
What would my legs look like now if I had made that decision when I was 32?
Every day, I also encounter people who have made the most of their imperfect bodies and faces, and I like to look at them. You know how they look, Mr. Sheeran? They look alive.
Unfortunately, you are part of an industry that is gripped by group psychosis about standards of beauty. In my opinion, you have allowed that psychosis to infect you, and you are full of shame.
Nobody needs to be the Most Beautiful. Even the Most Beautiful People can't stay the Most Beautiful, and it is very sad when they destroy their lives chasing fleeting youth.
What should you wear? Things that you like.
How should you feel about what you wear? "Hey, gotta wear something."
How should you choose what you wear? According to what is appropriate for the occasion.
What you look like is much less important than how you experience your life. You don't need to have "everyone" looking at you and thinking "He is HOT! He is so HOT! I wannabe like him/sleep with him." Do you know that I was once striding down the main street in my small hometown (which takes about 10 minutes going at a good clip and about 15 minutes ambling), feeling fly, wearing all black and my best imitation of a humorless model's expression, when I saw a guy walking past me, looking like he was trying not to laugh? I didn't know why he was unimpressed until I realized that I had white deodorant all over my black shirt.
Trying to be the Most Beautiful is a Waste of Time. Even when it's achievable by delusion or by being in a very small crowd, it doesn't cause happiness; it causes fear and despair. Fear that you'll lose it, because you will, and despair when this unavoidable loss turns into the reality that you don't know how to cope with.
I can't know why you seem to like dressing in awful clothes; maybe that's what you think you deserve. Contrary to what you might be thinking, your clothes aren't:
-whimsical
-creative
-exciting
-insouciant
-nonchalent
They don't have a Je ne sais quoi. I know what they are; they are awful.
I can't know why you look so timid when you're having your picture taken in more normal clothes for magazines; maybe whoever is taking your picture isn't a good photographer and doesn't know how to talk to you. Maybe the entire industry has accepted the idea that "Ed Sheeran isn't very goodlooking; poor guy," as if being young and in good health and in one piece were all nothing.
If you don't believe me, why not ask Cindy Crawford?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.allure.com/gallery/cindy-crawford-anti-aging-secrets/amp
You probably won't ask her "Why didn't you kill yourself at your Female Expiration Date of 30 years of age." I don't know if you realize that, over the past couple of decades, there has been a social movement to expand the parameters of what is considered beautiful, and that this social movement has been taken up and supported to some degree by the beauty industry. Some of that industry participation is idealistic, and some of it is calculated to sell more things to more customers. She doesn't need expanded parameters to be called beautiful, but at least that question is now out of date by many years.
You can ask her "Why has Lena been age-shamed and slut-shamed, sexually harassed and criminally violated for almost a decade, and you haven't?" That's a modern question to address the same issues of gender, power and social weapons.
