Big Rings & Short, Painted Nails

I've got a board on Pinterest with this title, Big Rings & Short Painted Nails.

I'm not sure when this mini obsession started, but I don't think it had fully taken me when we were in England at the start of the summer... otherwise, I'd have come home with lots of Barry M nail varnish and charity shop rings.

Quite a few of the pictures on this boards are of women with their hands covering their faces, like this.




rings and bracelets



I thought this was a bit odd. How did they take the picture? I thought, assuming that they'd taken the picture themselves. How revealing. Obviously, just because I don't have the kind of social life which revolves around mutual portrait taking, doesn't mean it's not common elsewhere.

The point is, though, all of these women had something I wanted, silver, turquoise and a manicure.



Recently, I was inspired by this picture...


The disembodied midriff of a fashionista, it's easy to imagine what the rest of her looks like, her glowing, dewy skin, accurately dishevelled hair... it inspired me and I attempted to recreate it - the hands, at least.

Here's my version...


It was great fun, but also, something unexpected happened. Choosing the colours, painting my nails, selecting similar rings, finding an approximate pose and then taking the myriad of photographs needed to achieve something I was happy with, had the effect of stripping away those magical layers of want and desire (not wanton desire!).

I know I haven't got the fabulous stole or waifish layers, but the point is that what we envy, I think, more than the actual subject of the images we see, is the image itself. 

It used to be the case that the photograph you took of the sunset bore no resemblance to the real thing (neither did it do it justice), but now, with Instagram with its tools of manipulation, you can make that cloudy sky look even better than the real thing. 



The hunger of modern existence, the hunger that's never satiated, can be abated. In the name of research (and vanity) I asked my lovely son to take this photograph of me...


With my turquoise and silver and fancy manicure, this image could easily be one of the images I'd see online and hastily pin to my Pinterest board. Yet, sitting here with my real self, I don't gasp in admiration of my own hands. I see them, not like this, static and disembodies, with a couple of fancy filters. I see them picking raisins out of the plughole in the kitchen sink, I see them having a fag on the back step and pulling tangles out of my hair. And, yes, all those rings really get on your nerves after a while.

Ultimately, it was a healthy exercise in perception, which I will try again. The legs with the ankle jeans and loafers with no socks, for example.
winter


Or the messy bun and giant, ear muffling scarf.

#winter time snow, a knitted scarf and easy bun hairstyle


It will be a project. Which I can call art or therapy, and it may have the added bonus of brightening the long solitary winter.

Have a go! 

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