I used to think “personality pic” was a euphemism for an unattractive person’s photos on Instagram, because they highlight someone’s personality rather than their attractiveness. It seemed like a funny way to detract from their physical appearance and focus on another aspect of themselves. I scoffed at this, and continued on my merry way posting “selfies” and pictures of overpriced frozen yogurt. Personality pictures be damned.
Within the past year, though, I’ve become probably the number one supporter of personality pictures. So either I’ve gotten uglier, which is scientifically impossible, or personality pictures have become "cool."
Now, I can totally understand why it’s nice for everyone to open up Instagram and see a effortfully posed photo of sorority girls giggling, or a “selfie” of an attractive person. There are definitely guys I follow on Instagram that I wish would post any sort of solo photo (looking at you, @champagnepapi). I also can understand why both girls and guys want to post photos that they know they look good in, because it’s a confidence boost that goes out to over 300 people.
With that said, the purpose of Instagram is to post photos of your life – to post photos that are meaningful, interesting, funny, and relatable to you. It’s an app that provides a sort of timeline of your life, and you control what’s on that timeline. If Instagram is a timeline of your life, then, it seems fairly unlikely that you are flawless every single day. It seems like that edited “selfie” or the twenty bland salads are, hopefully, an unfair representation of who you are.
I’m all about tricking people into finding me attractive on social media, so I understand a generous photo needs to be posted from time to time. But sometimes you get your wisdom teeth out and have to bungee cord ice packs around your face, or sometimes someone captures a photo of you sneezing at your high school graduation, or maybe there’s a photo of you as an overweight youth on the beach (just me?). These are also part of your timeline and I think the best display of personality and humor is to embrace those moments too, not just the cleverly captioned date party photos or driver's seat “selfies."
The personality picture, to me, is about authenticity. I want to look back on my Instagram next year and say “wow, I remember that time I got a first degree sunburn on my body in Mexico, glad I didn’t forget that moment.” If nothing else, it’s better that I post the photo than to have my mom tag me in it on Facebook.
