Mr. W just emailed me a photo of me taken on Saturday that he’d manipulated. The photo was taken when the photographer was behind me, then she called my name and I turned to look over my right shoulder, and that’s when the camera snapped. Mr. W cropped the photo so that it’s my head down to part of my shoulders and back, and then he did some special effect on it that made it look like abstract green, yellow and black bold strokes comprise the photo. I don’t like how I look in that photo, even before he artsified it. My bailiff agreed, after looking over my shoulder, that it was not a good picture of me and it looks like I have a big jaw. I have other problems with this picture that I’m too embarassed to say on here. Mr. W, however, loves this photo. In his words, it’s “a photo [he] absolutely love[s].” And it’s now the wallpaper background on his gigantic-screened new laptop. Which he brings everywhere with him. Including work. Great.

I remember that Grace’s high school boyfriend Edgar (still one of my good friends now) took a close-up photo of her face that she hated. She was laying down on a couch or a bed or something and laughing, and the angle of the camera to her face made her have a massive double-chin. And Grace was skinny; she was always a size 0/1. She did not ordinarily have a double-chin. I’ve seen the photo and I had to agree with her that it is the most unflattering shot of her, ever. EVER. But she couldn’t get Edgar to get rid of it. He loved that photo, even had it framed and set it up next to his bed. “She looks so cute!” he’d said.

I don’t know. Maybe these men love us with or without external flaws, and don’t see us with the vanity-aimed eyes through which we view ourselves. Maybe they don’t even see the flaws we see. Or maybe they love our flaws — big jaws, double-chins, and all — because these flaws are part of the appearance they have learned to love in looking at their significant others.

And they say men are visual.