Are We Dressing for Ourselves or for the Camera?
Twenty three years old and I caught myself doing something odd this morning. I picked out a shirt, looked in the mirror, and my first thought wasn't "do I like this" but "would this look good in a photo." That stopped me cold for a second.
There used to be something almost sacred about getting ready. You threw on whatever matched your energy for the day, nobody was grading it, nobody was watching except maybe your own reflection. Now there's this phantom lens hovering nearby at all times. Even on days I don't touch my phone until noon, I still dress like someone might snap a picture. The camera has wormed its way into decisions it was never invited to make. My old man never had this problem. He'd throw on a shirt because it was clean and the weather called for it, not because it needed to hold up under a filter. He got dressed for the room, not for an algorithm. My generation never got that kind of freedom. We grew up with a lens in our pocket from day one, so the gap between "living something" and "performing it" basically never existed for us.
Here's the part that actually bugs me: I can't tell anymore if I'm dressing to express something real about myself or just optimizing for likes I'll never even check. Some days I tell myself it's still self expression, camera or not. Other days I catch myself picking an outfit purely because it'll "hit different" in a photo, comfort be damned. That's when it stops being mine and starts being content. Nobody talks about the money angle either. Certain colors, fabrics, whole brands blow up not because they feel good against skin but because they pop under studio lighting or ring lights. We're out here buying clothes that were designed to be looked at, not lived in.
I'm not saying burn the camera. Photos matter, they hold onto versions of us we'd otherwise forget. The issue isn't that cameras exist, it's that they quietly took over as the judge of whether a moment even counted. We went from capturing life to constantly staging it. Maybe the real question isn't "myself or the camera," it's whether I can still spot the difference when they've fused together this tightly. Growing up, for me, means catching that blur and sometimes choosing to dress for nobody but the guy who'll never end up in a photo.
I've started testing this. Phone goes in another room, I get dressed, and if I still like what I see without knowing if it'll ever be documented, that's how I know the choice was actually mine.
-Devangshu Purohit
