Life in Images*

Something kind of cool just happened, in a weird chain of events.

I was reading over news stories online, since that's pretty much the only way I get my news. There was some really sad stuff about Haiti, and some really uplifting stuff, including a section on CNN.com where people in Haiti were able to communicate to relatives that they are still alive, and relatives are able to use a search engine to find missing loved ones. For some reason, it made me think of a pen pal I had in 5th grade. She wasn't from Haiti...in fact, I actually can't remember exactly WHERE she was from. I know my very first pen pal was from Jamaica - a boy who never answered the letter I sent - but I was given a new one because the first one never replied. I THINK this girl lived in South Africa, and then after about a year of writing to each other, her family moved to New Zealand. We lost contact pretty soon after that...I think because I lost her address. Our letters had been getting less frequent anyway, so she probably assumed my lack of letters meant I'd just lost interest.

Anyway, I still remembered her name after all these years - Krushanta Naidoo. I think I might have tried to search for her back when the internet first became popular, but nothing at ALL turned up - apparently Krushanta Naidoo isn't that common a name. Who knew? But tonight when I searched, results did show up - and the very first one was a Facebook page. All the info was private, but the picture showed a smiling woman around my age posing with a handsome man. I'm not 100% sure that it's my old pen pal, but she seems to be the right age, she's African, and her face seems like it could be an older version of the 11-year-old girl I had a photograph of for years (I tried to find it, but at some point during a college cleaning I probably threw it out). I sent her a message - we'll wait and see if a) she remembers me and b) it's really the same person at all.

What really struck me, though, and what prompted me to write all this down, was our profile pictures. Like I said before, her profile picture (and the only picture I could view) was of her standing (or sitting) beside a nice looking man, a little taller than she is, looks like he's probably a significant other, and she's got her head on his shoulder. I clicked over to my profile...and realized that while Scott and I live in a different world on a different continent, my picture of us is almost the exact same pose.

And I realized that not only is it extremely interesting how common human experiences are represented by pictures in general, but how the pictures we choose to represent ourselves can often point to where we are in our lives.**

I notice that high school and some college kids in general tend to have vaguely "artistic" photos of themselves. Even kids I know who don't fall under any kind of "emo" label have profile pictures that I would feel safe calling emo.

Then there's the older college kids, who seem to follow a trend of making their profile picture either a) a group shot of them*** and their friends at a party b) a group shot of them and their friends on a big adventure or c) a shot of just them.

Then we move into the post-college crowd...at this point a lot of people I know are in serious, long-term relationships, and that, too, is reflected in their profile pictures. I am no exception. A few of the newlyweds have pictures of their wedding day.

Once we start getting past marriage, the next step is often a picture of the new house/apartment. Or, if that step is skipped, the next picture is of the new baby (or, increasingly, baby-on-the-way; ultrasound pics seem to be a new trend).

Oh, and my friends who don't have kids or SOs, or maybe just SOs but not kids, tend to have pictures of their cats.

Now, I don't have a lot of friends who are past the kid stage of their lives. Even my friends with older kids usually have some sort of picture of themselves and their kids as their profile image. However, I do find it interesting that out of the small number of people I know who are past children and into retirement, most of them have almost reverted back to the high school picture - a solitary shot, not really emo, but usually a quiet, simple sort of artistic.

Maybe I'm the only one who has observed these trends among my friends, but I do think it's quite interested to see how a social networking site can paint such a timeline of life events just by observing profile pictures.



*I would like to point out that I find this entire post little ironic, considering the title of this blog and my opinion of my own "image".
**I do realize that everyone does not fit these stereotypes. I'm just observing the trend.
***Please excuse my lack of grammar; I know it isn't proper to use "themselves" or "themself" the way I am here, but I get so sick of the whole "his or herself" thing.